7 ms·

> doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs

by donatj 5y ago

> doing nothing of any practical value while greatly helping out with destroying our planet Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. The idea that we should do less stuff and be miserable because climate change is fatalist and just silly. We should be building nuclear power plants at a drastic rate to meet supply.

antihero 5y ago
Gaming and TV shows use a fraction of the energy to bring joy to far more people. Even if your enjoyment comes from watching numbers go up so you can get rich quick, it's literally burning through power and advanced components to do it at a rate like nothing else ever conceived. And it achieves basically nothing. Crypto is currently useless at doing anything other than making some people rich.
- throwaway52355 5y ago
  So entertainment matters more than censorship-resistance and self-sovereignty. Remind me what did Wikileaks resort to using after it got banned from all payment networks?
- lui8906 5y ago
  Your argument is completely valid against Ethereum and Bitcoin, I hope they will be used less to reduce the energy used by crypto. However the vast majority of others use Proof of Stake and a fraction of the energy. Take Solana, currently the 5th largest by MCAP, a tx uses a similar amount of energy as two Google searches. I am pointing this out as I see often the whole crypto market lumped together but crypto networks are not all created equally. Some are 10 years old and others are 2 years with vastly different implementations. > https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-2021 https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-...
burnished 5y ago
Our other uses (which may need to be curtailed, not arguing for or against that here) have comparatively fixed costs. Proof of work inherently increases energy consumption to keep difficulty up.
gambiting 5y ago
>>Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Humans have been playing games literally for thousands of years - there is a value in entertainment, especially with our busy lives of 21st century. You can of course overdo it, turn it into an addiction and it can destroy your life - like many other things. Crypto trading is as valuable as trading scraps of paper with a dollar sign scribbled on it - if it were done for fun or entertainment, then sure, whatever, but it's having major impact on our energy consumption and has to be curbed. PS - also, a small side note - literally no gaming rig uses an "upwards of a thousands watts". Even fitted with the highest rated components currently available on the market(say a 12th gen i9 + RTX3090) you won't be using 1000W of power. Consoles use about 200-300W under full load, and that's a bigger gaming market than PC. And then the biggest gaming market is mobile - larger than PC and consoles combined, and the energy consumption there is tiny. So you're massively off base here. >>Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. And I honestly think that anyone who thinks crypto will become "an alternative financial system" and not just a pyramid scheme is lying to themselves.
- snarfy 5y ago
  It's true - crypto is bullshit. I've had a hard time shaking the realization that money is bullshit too.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    I think there's a fundamental issue here that prevents us from reaching an understanding. ANYTHING can be used as money. The systems that we currently have in place have lots of big problems, but "we" decided to use them and that's why they are popular. We could also decide to use a cryptocurrency as money, and it would be equally valid, and it would become our "money" - that bit is fine and I'm not arguing with it. What I am commenting on, and what I am calling bullshit, is the cold hard reality of crypto - there hasn't been a coin invented yet that is anything but a ponzi scheme. Everything from bitcoin to ETH to dogecoin is just a scam to make some people rich, even if it started with good intentions(and I believe Bitcoin really was started with the intention to become a currency). The second this changes, and we have a cryptocurrency that is actually used as money and not a plaything, I'll happily stop complaining about it.
formerly_proven 5y ago
> Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. About 25 % of energy expended today is to make people not freeze, which is the single biggest or second biggest energy consumer world wide. The other one is transporting stuff and people. The third one is making stuff (food, buildings etc. use a lot of energy).
UncleMeat 5y ago
Yeah, people should pay for their externalities. Currently, emissions are not priced and everybody who is using a lot of power is stealing quality of life from future generations and the global poor. BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate.
- wrinkl3 5y ago
  > BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate. But if it's still taxed proportionally to the generated emissions, does it matter how big the rewards are?
- grlass 5y ago
  > BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate. I don't follow your logic, could you elaborate? One could say that about other things subject to carbon tax. Like all goods and services, the price is set by how much people are will to pay for it. "the price people are willing to pay for short-haul flights could just increase, and therefore the airline profits are unaffected." "the price people are willing to pay for aluminium could just increase, and therefore the smelters are unaffected." They don't really make sense. Carbon taxing would change miner behaviour, because greener energy would be more attractive (by virtue of being cheaper, especially with carbon taxing and reduced fossil fuel subsidies).
CynicusRex 5y ago
>“Serious question, where does this line of thinking end?” It ends at the last pyramid scheme.
- wrinkl3 5y ago
  That line doesn't mean anything - should we make any type of computation that contributes to a pyramid scheme illegal? How do you even define a pyramid scheme in a way that doesn't also cover traditional financial institutions and academia?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    > How do you even define a pyramid scheme in a way that doesn't also cover traditional financial institutions and academia? These places have already got laws against pyramid schemes, so I’d start by asking a lawyer to explain the various existing laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_Scheme_Illegal_Map.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_Scheme_Illegal_Ma...
aceazzameen 5y ago
Crypto isn't entertainment, it's greed pure and simple. It's a pyramid scheme where once you join, you have to sell the idea to others to increase your value. Crypto isn't the first of this kind, nor will it be the last. But it does use obscene amounts of energy to make the scam work. And the energy requirements become greater year after year. It is not sustainable in our civilization.
tzs 5y ago
> Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. All of those things have practical value. Humans need relaxation and entertainment in order to be productive, which gaming and sitcoms provide. (I'm not going to explain how smartphones have practical value because I assume that was included due to some sort of editing buffer mix up or similar while you were simultaneously writing something else while commenting here). > Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. That can be done for orders of magnitude less energy. The high energy use of Bitcoin and similar is not due to its providing a financial system aspect. It is due to the particular implementation details of its ledger.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  No, the problem with the line of thinking is not that gaming has no practical value, it is that some people think gaming has no practical value.

by donatj 5y ago

antihero 5y ago

Gaming and TV shows use a fraction of the energy to bring joy to far more people. Even if your enjoyment comes from watching numbers go up so you can get rich quick, it's literally burning through power and advanced components to do it at a rate like nothing else ever conceived. And it achieves basically nothing. Crypto is currently useless at doing anything other than making some people rich.

throwaway52355 5y ago
So entertainment matters more than censorship-resistance and self-sovereignty. Remind me what did Wikileaks resort to using after it got banned from all payment networks?
lui8906 5y ago
Your argument is completely valid against Ethereum and Bitcoin, I hope they will be used less to reduce the energy used by crypto. However the vast majority of others use Proof of Stake and a fraction of the energy. Take Solana, currently the 5th largest by MCAP, a tx uses a similar amount of energy as two Google searches. I am pointing this out as I see often the whole crypto market lumped together but crypto networks are not all created equally. Some are 10 years old and others are 2 years with vastly different implementations. > https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-2021 https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-...

burnished 5y ago

Our other uses (which may need to be curtailed, not arguing for or against that here) have comparatively fixed costs. Proof of work inherently increases energy consumption to keep difficulty up.

gambiting 5y ago

>>Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Humans have been playing games literally for thousands of years - there is a value in entertainment, especially with our busy lives of 21st century. You can of course overdo it, turn it into an addiction and it can destroy your life - like many other things. Crypto trading is as valuable as trading scraps of paper with a dollar sign scribbled on it - if it were done for fun or entertainment, then sure, whatever, but it's having major impact on our energy consumption and has to be curbed. PS - also, a small side note - literally no gaming rig uses an "upwards of a thousands watts". Even fitted with the highest rated components currently available on the market(say a 12th gen i9 + RTX3090) you won't be using 1000W of power. Consoles use about 200-300W under full load, and that's a bigger gaming market than PC. And then the biggest gaming market is mobile - larger than PC and consoles combined, and the energy consumption there is tiny. So you're massively off base here. >>Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. And I honestly think that anyone who thinks crypto will become "an alternative financial system" and not just a pyramid scheme is lying to themselves.

snarfy 5y ago
It's true - crypto is bullshit. I've had a hard time shaking the realization that money is bullshit too.
- gambiting 5y ago
  I think there's a fundamental issue here that prevents us from reaching an understanding. ANYTHING can be used as money. The systems that we currently have in place have lots of big problems, but "we" decided to use them and that's why they are popular. We could also decide to use a cryptocurrency as money, and it would be equally valid, and it would become our "money" - that bit is fine and I'm not arguing with it. What I am commenting on, and what I am calling bullshit, is the cold hard reality of crypto - there hasn't been a coin invented yet that is anything but a ponzi scheme. Everything from bitcoin to ETH to dogecoin is just a scam to make some people rich, even if it started with good intentions(and I believe Bitcoin really was started with the intention to become a currency). The second this changes, and we have a cryptocurrency that is actually used as money and not a plaything, I'll happily stop complaining about it.

formerly_proven 5y ago

> Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. About 25 % of energy expended today is to make people not freeze, which is the single biggest or second biggest energy consumer world wide. The other one is transporting stuff and people. The third one is making stuff (food, buildings etc. use a lot of energy).

UncleMeat 5y ago

Yeah, people should pay for their externalities. Currently, emissions are not priced and everybody who is using a lot of power is stealing quality of life from future generations and the global poor. BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate.

wrinkl3 5y ago
> BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate. But if it's still taxed proportionally to the generated emissions, does it matter how big the rewards are?
grlass 5y ago
> BTC mining is just one of those operations that is resistant to a carbon tax since the price of BTC and therefore the mining rewards can just rise to compensate. I don't follow your logic, could you elaborate? One could say that about other things subject to carbon tax. Like all goods and services, the price is set by how much people are will to pay for it. "the price people are willing to pay for short-haul flights could just increase, and therefore the airline profits are unaffected." "the price people are willing to pay for aluminium could just increase, and therefore the smelters are unaffected." They don't really make sense. Carbon taxing would change miner behaviour, because greener energy would be more attractive (by virtue of being cheaper, especially with carbon taxing and reduced fossil fuel subsidies).

CynicusRex 5y ago

>“Serious question, where does this line of thinking end?” It ends at the last pyramid scheme.

wrinkl3 5y ago
That line doesn't mean anything - should we make any type of computation that contributes to a pyramid scheme illegal? How do you even define a pyramid scheme in a way that doesn't also cover traditional financial institutions and academia?
- ben_w 5y ago
  > How do you even define a pyramid scheme in a way that doesn't also cover traditional financial institutions and academia? These places have already got laws against pyramid schemes, so I’d start by asking a lawyer to explain the various existing laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_Scheme_Illegal_Map.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_Scheme_Illegal_Ma...

aceazzameen 5y ago

Crypto isn't entertainment, it's greed pure and simple. It's a pyramid scheme where once you join, you have to sell the idea to others to increase your value. Crypto isn't the first of this kind, nor will it be the last. But it does use obscene amounts of energy to make the scam work. And the energy requirements become greater year after year. It is not sustainable in our civilization.

tzs 5y ago

> Serious question, where does this line of thinking end? Gaming rigs use upwards of a thousand watts, no practical value in gaming. Watching sitcoms on a television has no practical value. Phones capable of doing things other than making calls have no practical value, but we charge them all the time. All of those things have practical value. Humans need relaxation and entertainment in order to be productive, which gaming and sitcoms provide. (I'm not going to explain how smartphones have practical value because I assume that was included due to some sort of editing buffer mix up or similar while you were simultaneously writing something else while commenting here). > Honestly I think providing an alternative financial system is more practical than most of the other energy intensive things we do these days. That can be done for orders of magnitude less energy. The high energy use of Bitcoin and similar is not due to its providing a financial system aspect. It is due to the particular implementation details of its ledger.

lostmsu 5y ago
No, the problem with the line of thinking is not that gaming has no practical value, it is that some people think gaming has no practical value.