11 ms·

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me

All the Web3 criticisms remind me of my experiences with Star Trek. For context, I never watched Star Trek. I'd read stories about fans and it always struck me as the dorkiest possible show, with unabashed nerdiness making something like the Big Bang Theory look like a sophisticated work of art. But one day, I listened to a podcast about strength training and a question came up about which Star Trek leader the host liked more. And I was struck by how they described them. They were leaders. Competent, skilled, and wise men. This is not the impression I got listening from their rabid fans who were at their worst, at the far end of this (at least on first and worst impressions). I'd watch some scenes and it was in some respects closer to sci-fi Shakespeare than anything else. And so this gap between reality and impression stuck with me. How could I be so swayed by the worst version of something that never existed? Years later and the rabid users of cryptocurrency rile me up. There's so much abuse and corruption happening in this space, metered with gambling addictions and delusions. But the math and incentives are there. It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. There's a wide surface area of financial problems that even fintech hasn't solved yet. And a whole bunch of problems who we don't even realize exist that can one day be solved by these new mathematical properties embedded into software. So I'm not too keen on stepping too deeply into the cynicism. I'd like to wait without a final judgement on what it might become. I don't want to miss out on who Captain Picard might become.

fab1an 5y ago
This is a superb metaphor.
tux3 5y ago
So, that's a good argument for why you shouldn't dismiss a show or a thing in general based only on negative secondhand impressions. The lesson to takeaway is that you should judge a thing by its own quality, not by your negative impression of the fanbase. But from that, there is no way you should conclude that cynicism is wrong in general. You should not overreact to too much cynicism by discarding criticism entirely! You should react by seeking better information.
- baby 5y ago
  I don't think that's GP's conclusion. GP's conclusion is that crypto is rooted in real innovation and the noise surrounding it gives the false impression that the tech is just a scam.
  - _bfhp 5y ago
    ...relying on the evidence-free invention of not merely some specific fictional benefits of the technology, but a category of material improvements in the world: > And a whole bunch of problems who we don't even realize exist that can one day be solved
  - tbabb 5y ago
    It's not clear that the impression is false.
    - baby 5y ago
      I’m working in the middle of the field so I might be biased, there’s incredible innovation
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - tbabb 5y ago
        "Innovation" and "scam" are not incompatible.
  - xchaotic 5y ago
    and what is that 'real innovation' exactly? Writing checksums of everything in multiple copies, very slowly? Databases had these features for decades.
    - baby 5y ago
      I don’t know you could, like, read about it? A few keywords: threshold signatures, zk-snarks, consensusless protocols, byzantine fault tolerant protocols, vrf, vdf, starks, bls
Swizec 5y ago
Love this take. It's kind of how I feel about crypto – cautiously observing, investing money I can afford to lose, toying with ideas on how and which real problems it could solve, and doing my best to ignore the parts that smell like pure hype, MLMs, and land grabs. There is something here and I don't know what yet. I doubt NFTs are it. And we already know it doesn't quite work as a currency.
Elof 5y ago
While I agree with all your sentiment here, I think it's ok to be critical of web3 and still see a future for crypto. With all of the hyperbole and real issues both technical and social around the web3 ecosystem I'm reminded of being an outsider spectator of the dot com bubble crash. I was a senior in high school living in the east bay and something that kind of blew my mind at the time was grocery delivery. The idea of ordering some food online and getting it delivered was very exciting, the reality was it wasn't a tenable service. 12 years later with the advent and proliferation of smart phones the idea had legs and now I can and do order groceries from a variety of stores. Including a local speciality asian food place. I feel like the promises of web3 is in the phase of some good ideas that aren't ready for mainstream, similarly to grocery delivery in 1999
mempko 5y ago
> But the math and incentives are there. Cui bono as they say. Crypto won't fail because of the group that is driving most of the demand. It's a small group of people with lots of money. If it was a big group of people with little money, you could make the case that cryptocurrencies will fail. It's success has little to do with the math and quality of the technology.
- paulgb 5y ago
  You could have said the same thing about the ~2017 ICO bubble, which had a bunch of smart money VC involvement. As far as I can tell, the big VCs did just fine, because they liquidated enough of their tokens on the little guy before the market crashed.
  - mempko 5y ago
    Exactly. Unfortunately the little guys don't decide the winners and losers so they suffer as they must. You saw it in the end of the 90s with the tech bubble, and in the 1980s with personal computing. I doubt anyone would agree the best technology won during any of those periods. I mean, would anyone consider Windows, for example, the pinnacle of OS tech? Or even today, bitcoin and ethereum the pinnacle of blockchain tech? When a small group drives most of the investment and decision making, you end up with a lot of collateral damage. It's actually sad since there are likely really technically great blockchain systems out there that will just die in the wind, and it will have nothing to do with the system's quality.
- lottin 5y ago
  It doesn't matter, it revolves around a bizarre ideology that doesn't and can't work in theory or in practice. I suggest everybody look up the story about the cruise ship Satoshi to get a glimpse of how deluded these people are.
  - mempko 5y ago
    Oh my! https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voya...
pcwalton 5y ago
> It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. It's easy for me to make that case. Ransomware aside, there's no underlying value in cryptocurrency, unlike currencies which have the full faith and credit of governments. This is a fundamental problem that I see no way around.
- exdsq 5y ago
  I’d argue there’s an underlying value in tokens like Ether that is similar to paying for compute power and storage on AWS. I’m not saying the price right now is correct, but that there is an intrinsic value.
  - not2b 5y ago
    It cost compute power to produce the tokens, but that's sunk cost, not intrinsic. All that matters afterward is whether people want the tokens and will exchange things of value for them.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      Is fiat currency any different? My coins and bills don't have any intrinsic value either, but they are still currency.
      - not2b 5y ago
        If your debts and bills are denominated in the currency of your country, the bills and coins have value because you know how many of them you need to pay what you owe. So yes, if we ever got to the stage where your rent is priced in some coin, that coin would correspond to a currency. But until then, it's more like a volatile stock and "currency" is a misnomer.
    - ahtihn 5y ago
      I think the intrinsic value is coming from the fact that you need to spend eth to run smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.
aeonflux 5y ago
The math is there, yes. Its cool and exciting. But thats all. All the incentives are to control the plane and grab the next big thing, like Facebook and Google grabbed the Internet Advertising. Any form of decentralization is not possible, it won't work. Just look how hard it is for people to agree on anything very basic. The higher the stake, the more people will try to grab as much as they can. How would imagine for people to get a consensus about upgrades and changes in the protocol. Just look how much bitcoin staled because of that. Everything is controller by developers of given technology. If there is a reason, they will force their agenda. It's been happening over and over.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> But the math and incentives are there. It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. This strikes at one of my primary complaints with crypto/web3 discussions: Advocates switch between specific cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency in general, and the concept of a blockchain in general as convenient for their arguments. The concept of a cryptocurrency will always exist, but that doesn't mean that we can't be critical of the current financial shenanigans going on in the space. If it helps, remember that the thing people talk about the most when discussing cryptocurrencies is always the price. But cryptocurrencies don't have any built-in notion of price. 1 BTC is 1 BTC. What people are really excited about is the exchanges and the on-ramps and off-ramps, which have nothing to do with the blockchain or cryptography.
- beachy 5y ago
  > What people are really excited about is the exchanges and the on-ramps and off-ramps, which have nothing to do with the blockchain or cryptography. Isn't that like saying that what gets people really exciting about beer is the euphoric feeling after consuming it, which has nothing to do with the liquid itself? If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentially spending it one day is the only thing that makes the crypto world go around.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentially spending it one day is the only thing that makes the crypto world go around. "Spending" it doesn't require cashing it out in a hypothetical cryptocurrency future. People can, and do, transact in cryptocurrencies. Though it's actually quite painful, slow, expensive, and lacks all of the benefits of traditional transactions so everyone avoids it if possible. But this exposes another flaw in the currency argument: If the on-ramps and off-ramps were to become so cheap, fast, and ubiquitous that we could transact instantly in cryptocurrencies for free, then suddenly the underlying coins wouldn't need to have any speculative value. If I could click "buy" on a product and the exchange into crypto, transfer, and end-user exchange out of crypto was basically instant, then the exchange rate doesn't actually matter at all because I'm only holding for a brief instant. Yet that would break the speculative use case entirely, so the hype tends to follow the deliberately inefficient coins. Crypto proponents don't actually want cryptocurrency to be easy to use. They only want you to buy it, then do nothing with it. Ever. If you lose it, even better (for everyone else).
alexslobodnik 5y ago
Spot on. Easy to destroy a poorly constructed argument. Those who could have a well constructed argument often choose to spend their explanation energy on those who are less skeptical.
trunnell 5y ago
> But the math and incentives are there. Can you elaborate on this? The best critiques of blockchain tech, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DeFi, etc. describe fatal flaws at the core of those technologies. For example, the lack of monetary policy and regulations, privacy and security shortcomings, and high transaction costs. It'd be great to read a positive analysis of the core merits (the math and the incentives) and how those can be applied to solve problems.
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit, as I see it. That has some value, and NFTs are kind of the perfect vehicle to use the technology. But does it have any practical use? That's the question. NFTs are hot right now as an investment vehicle, or as a way for artists to sell unique creations (leading to investment vehicles, I suppose). I'm not sold on the utility, long term.
  - Yizahi 5y ago
    > Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit But it's neither decentralized nor a proof AT ALL. NFT literally can't facilitate anything by itself, without adding some centralized DB to it and some centralized humans governing all interactions between clients.
    - orange8 5y ago
      > NFT literally can't facilitate anything by itself, without adding some centralized DB to it What exactly do you want an NFT to facilitate? And are you raving mad at the people who make the NFTs, the people who buy them or both?
      - Yizahi 5y ago
        Well at minimum at least something, at maximum - fully what cryptobros already promise today (so that their messages won't be lies) - proof of ownership, transfer of ownership, enforcement of ownership, decentralization, universal standards and so on. Nothing special, only the things crypto fans already say today to the gullible buyers.
mavhc 5y ago
Problem is blockchain is a test to see if humans will set their own home on fire, while they're still living it, for the promise of a quick buck. Promoted by people who think government is a terrible idea, an idea so terrible that literally every large group of people invented it. Of course if I had mined some bitcoin when it was new, I'd be telling you how great it was to ensure my own profits
- pvarangot 5y ago
  I wouldn't say large groups of people invent governments. I think they arise from infighting between small groups of people and then a majority of people that didn't really care much about what was being fought about are just "ok with it". I don't know if government is a terrible idea, but if you agree that monopolies are a terrible idea then maybe at least you should give people against the concept of a government some attention regarding the "monopoly on violence" contradiction that's pretty much alive in all forms of government in place today.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    There's no large functioning society without government though, it appears to be the natural stable state. If you want to gather 100,000 of your most random friends and try a new idea though, that's great. But history suggests you'll invent government.
    - pvarangot 5y ago
      You could have said the same thing but change "without government" to "with electricity" in like 1830 and be right. History doesn't suggest anything, people suggest things, and "it didn't happen yet so it will never happen" is useless as a historical argument. History suggests what the stable state of something is as much as reading tea leafs suggests it.
      - mavhc 5y ago
        And all the people who choose to live without electricity are weird. Many groups have tried to live without government, which have succeeded at scale?
beepbooptheory 5y ago
Like that one episode of TNG where they wake up all the people from the nineties, but it's one guy who keeps asking Picard how much BTC is at, how the blockchain is doing, etc. edit: https://youtu.be/XQQYbKT_rMg https://youtu.be/XQQYbKT_rMg
Yizahi 5y ago
Math is indeed there, multiplication, division etc. I just fail to understand why is that important for you? Incentives are also there - the infamous FOMO. I think it's not a thing to be proud of.
dr-detroit 5y ago
Maybe you should not always try and be the worst thing society will allow you without jail time.
Barrin92 5y ago
Instrumentalizing a show whose essential message was that living in a post-scarcity society is possible and where people pursue their interests genuinely rather than in the name of economic gain to make a case for crypto is so on brand with the actual post we're commenting on you could put it directly on the website Let's just listen to the man himself for a second, while we're talking about star trek and money: https://youtu.be/PV4Oze9JEU0?t=143 https://youtu.be/PV4Oze9JEU0?t=143
- neilparikh 5y ago
  It's even more ironic, because the entire point of NFTs is to create artificial scarcity in an environment without scarcity (the digital world). I guess you could argue that NFTs isn't the main aspect of cryptocurrencies, and I think you'd be right, but I find cryptocurrency projects in general seem to lean heavily into the scarcity aspect, and promise that early adopters will be able to cash in that scarcity later.
  - 3np 5y ago
    > I guess you could argue that NFTs isn't the main aspect of cryptocurrencies Not even a major aspect. Just like neither are the main aspect(s) of Web3. Despite what con artists and puppet farms on Reddit and Twitter are pushing. (The web3 moniker in its current form came years before the first NFT contract)
sergiotapia 5y ago
Bitcoin has merit. There is a finite amount of it, and that's it. There is no more bitcoin after the whole 23? million are "minted". Alt-coins/shitcoins are grifts, they can be worth what people want to pay but anyone can spin up a new coin. And they do. Pump and dump for chumps. NFTs are the same. Anyone can create an NFT for whatever. There is no value in it whatsoever.
guessbest 5y ago
Captain Kirk was a better captain.
pje 5y ago
They literally don't have money in Star Trek. Their society considers itself to have advanced beyond the need for money entirely. This couldn't be further from the future envisioned by web3 people, who seem to want to further financialize, marketize, and commodify all of human experience and interaction.
hvgk 5y ago
I’ve spent enough time in fintech to know where this ends. The interest in it is purely because of the vast problems it creates are opportunities to gain something. These are numerous compared to the roughly single benefit and the technology itself. It’s yet another market created to manipulate arbitrary wealth tokens. The masters are different that is all.
avgcorrection 5y ago
I’ve never really watched Star Trek either. Now my impression of it is that people watch it for the same reason that they watch The West Wing;[1] to fawn at the Leadership and Decorum of the Wise men (and women!). (Probably not though.) I’d rather interact with cosplaying nerds than with those haughty-taughty process and procedure geeks. [1]: I of course have not watched that, either.

fab1an 5y ago

This is a superb metaphor.

tux3 5y ago

So, that's a good argument for why you shouldn't dismiss a show or a thing in general based only on negative secondhand impressions. The lesson to takeaway is that you should judge a thing by its own quality, not by your negative impression of the fanbase. But from that, there is no way you should conclude that cynicism is wrong in general. You should not overreact to too much cynicism by discarding criticism entirely! You should react by seeking better information.

baby 5y ago
I don't think that's GP's conclusion. GP's conclusion is that crypto is rooted in real innovation and the noise surrounding it gives the false impression that the tech is just a scam.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  ...relying on the evidence-free invention of not merely some specific fictional benefits of the technology, but a category of material improvements in the world: > And a whole bunch of problems who we don't even realize exist that can one day be solved
- tbabb 5y ago
  It's not clear that the impression is false.
  - baby 5y ago
    I’m working in the middle of the field so I might be biased, there’s incredible innovation
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tbabb 5y ago
      "Innovation" and "scam" are not incompatible.
- xchaotic 5y ago
  and what is that 'real innovation' exactly? Writing checksums of everything in multiple copies, very slowly? Databases had these features for decades.
  - baby 5y ago
    I don’t know you could, like, read about it? A few keywords: threshold signatures, zk-snarks, consensusless protocols, byzantine fault tolerant protocols, vrf, vdf, starks, bls

Swizec 5y ago

Love this take. It's kind of how I feel about crypto – cautiously observing, investing money I can afford to lose, toying with ideas on how and which real problems it could solve, and doing my best to ignore the parts that smell like pure hype, MLMs, and land grabs. There is something here and I don't know what yet. I doubt NFTs are it. And we already know it doesn't quite work as a currency.

Elof 5y ago

While I agree with all your sentiment here, I think it's ok to be critical of web3 and still see a future for crypto. With all of the hyperbole and real issues both technical and social around the web3 ecosystem I'm reminded of being an outsider spectator of the dot com bubble crash. I was a senior in high school living in the east bay and something that kind of blew my mind at the time was grocery delivery. The idea of ordering some food online and getting it delivered was very exciting, the reality was it wasn't a tenable service. 12 years later with the advent and proliferation of smart phones the idea had legs and now I can and do order groceries from a variety of stores. Including a local speciality asian food place. I feel like the promises of web3 is in the phase of some good ideas that aren't ready for mainstream, similarly to grocery delivery in 1999

mempko 5y ago

> But the math and incentives are there. Cui bono as they say. Crypto won't fail because of the group that is driving most of the demand. It's a small group of people with lots of money. If it was a big group of people with little money, you could make the case that cryptocurrencies will fail. It's success has little to do with the math and quality of the technology.

paulgb 5y ago
You could have said the same thing about the ~2017 ICO bubble, which had a bunch of smart money VC involvement. As far as I can tell, the big VCs did just fine, because they liquidated enough of their tokens on the little guy before the market crashed.
- mempko 5y ago
  Exactly. Unfortunately the little guys don't decide the winners and losers so they suffer as they must. You saw it in the end of the 90s with the tech bubble, and in the 1980s with personal computing. I doubt anyone would agree the best technology won during any of those periods. I mean, would anyone consider Windows, for example, the pinnacle of OS tech? Or even today, bitcoin and ethereum the pinnacle of blockchain tech? When a small group drives most of the investment and decision making, you end up with a lot of collateral damage. It's actually sad since there are likely really technically great blockchain systems out there that will just die in the wind, and it will have nothing to do with the system's quality.
lottin 5y ago
It doesn't matter, it revolves around a bizarre ideology that doesn't and can't work in theory or in practice. I suggest everybody look up the story about the cruise ship Satoshi to get a glimpse of how deluded these people are.
- mempko 5y ago
  Oh my! https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voya...

pcwalton 5y ago

> It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. It's easy for me to make that case. Ransomware aside, there's no underlying value in cryptocurrency, unlike currencies which have the full faith and credit of governments. This is a fundamental problem that I see no way around.

exdsq 5y ago
I’d argue there’s an underlying value in tokens like Ether that is similar to paying for compute power and storage on AWS. I’m not saying the price right now is correct, but that there is an intrinsic value.
- not2b 5y ago
  It cost compute power to produce the tokens, but that's sunk cost, not intrinsic. All that matters afterward is whether people want the tokens and will exchange things of value for them.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Is fiat currency any different? My coins and bills don't have any intrinsic value either, but they are still currency.
    - not2b 5y ago
      If your debts and bills are denominated in the currency of your country, the bills and coins have value because you know how many of them you need to pay what you owe. So yes, if we ever got to the stage where your rent is priced in some coin, that coin would correspond to a currency. But until then, it's more like a volatile stock and "currency" is a misnomer.
  - ahtihn 5y ago
    I think the intrinsic value is coming from the fact that you need to spend eth to run smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

aeonflux 5y ago

The math is there, yes. Its cool and exciting. But thats all. All the incentives are to control the plane and grab the next big thing, like Facebook and Google grabbed the Internet Advertising. Any form of decentralization is not possible, it won't work. Just look how hard it is for people to agree on anything very basic. The higher the stake, the more people will try to grab as much as they can. How would imagine for people to get a consensus about upgrades and changes in the protocol. Just look how much bitcoin staled because of that. Everything is controller by developers of given technology. If there is a reason, they will force their agenda. It's been happening over and over.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> But the math and incentives are there. It would hard for me to make a case that eventually cryptocurrency will fail. This strikes at one of my primary complaints with crypto/web3 discussions: Advocates switch between specific cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency in general, and the concept of a blockchain in general as convenient for their arguments. The concept of a cryptocurrency will always exist, but that doesn't mean that we can't be critical of the current financial shenanigans going on in the space. If it helps, remember that the thing people talk about the most when discussing cryptocurrencies is always the price. But cryptocurrencies don't have any built-in notion of price. 1 BTC is 1 BTC. What people are really excited about is the exchanges and the on-ramps and off-ramps, which have nothing to do with the blockchain or cryptography.

beachy 5y ago
> What people are really excited about is the exchanges and the on-ramps and off-ramps, which have nothing to do with the blockchain or cryptography. Isn't that like saying that what gets people really exciting about beer is the euphoric feeling after consuming it, which has nothing to do with the liquid itself? If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentially spending it one day is the only thing that makes the crypto world go around.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > If it wasn't for the exchanges and on- and off-ramps then cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist at all. Potentially spending it one day is the only thing that makes the crypto world go around. "Spending" it doesn't require cashing it out in a hypothetical cryptocurrency future. People can, and do, transact in cryptocurrencies. Though it's actually quite painful, slow, expensive, and lacks all of the benefits of traditional transactions so everyone avoids it if possible. But this exposes another flaw in the currency argument: If the on-ramps and off-ramps were to become so cheap, fast, and ubiquitous that we could transact instantly in cryptocurrencies for free, then suddenly the underlying coins wouldn't need to have any speculative value. If I could click "buy" on a product and the exchange into crypto, transfer, and end-user exchange out of crypto was basically instant, then the exchange rate doesn't actually matter at all because I'm only holding for a brief instant. Yet that would break the speculative use case entirely, so the hype tends to follow the deliberately inefficient coins. Crypto proponents don't actually want cryptocurrency to be easy to use. They only want you to buy it, then do nothing with it. Ever. If you lose it, even better (for everyone else).

alexslobodnik 5y ago

Spot on. Easy to destroy a poorly constructed argument. Those who could have a well constructed argument often choose to spend their explanation energy on those who are less skeptical.

trunnell 5y ago

> But the math and incentives are there. Can you elaborate on this? The best critiques of blockchain tech, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DeFi, etc. describe fatal flaws at the core of those technologies. For example, the lack of monetary policy and regulations, privacy and security shortcomings, and high transaction costs. It'd be great to read a positive analysis of the core merits (the math and the incentives) and how those can be applied to solve problems.

deltarholamda 5y ago
Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit, as I see it. That has some value, and NFTs are kind of the perfect vehicle to use the technology. But does it have any practical use? That's the question. NFTs are hot right now as an investment vehicle, or as a way for artists to sell unique creations (leading to investment vehicles, I suppose). I'm not sold on the utility, long term.
- Yizahi 5y ago
  > Decentralized proof of ownership is the core merit But it's neither decentralized nor a proof AT ALL. NFT literally can't facilitate anything by itself, without adding some centralized DB to it and some centralized humans governing all interactions between clients.
  - orange8 5y ago
    > NFT literally can't facilitate anything by itself, without adding some centralized DB to it What exactly do you want an NFT to facilitate? And are you raving mad at the people who make the NFTs, the people who buy them or both?
    - Yizahi 5y ago
      Well at minimum at least something, at maximum - fully what cryptobros already promise today (so that their messages won't be lies) - proof of ownership, transfer of ownership, enforcement of ownership, decentralization, universal standards and so on. Nothing special, only the things crypto fans already say today to the gullible buyers.

mavhc 5y ago

Problem is blockchain is a test to see if humans will set their own home on fire, while they're still living it, for the promise of a quick buck. Promoted by people who think government is a terrible idea, an idea so terrible that literally every large group of people invented it. Of course if I had mined some bitcoin when it was new, I'd be telling you how great it was to ensure my own profits

pvarangot 5y ago
I wouldn't say large groups of people invent governments. I think they arise from infighting between small groups of people and then a majority of people that didn't really care much about what was being fought about are just "ok with it". I don't know if government is a terrible idea, but if you agree that monopolies are a terrible idea then maybe at least you should give people against the concept of a government some attention regarding the "monopoly on violence" contradiction that's pretty much alive in all forms of government in place today.
- mavhc 5y ago
  There's no large functioning society without government though, it appears to be the natural stable state. If you want to gather 100,000 of your most random friends and try a new idea though, that's great. But history suggests you'll invent government.
  - pvarangot 5y ago
    You could have said the same thing but change "without government" to "with electricity" in like 1830 and be right. History doesn't suggest anything, people suggest things, and "it didn't happen yet so it will never happen" is useless as a historical argument. History suggests what the stable state of something is as much as reading tea leafs suggests it.
    - mavhc 5y ago
      And all the people who choose to live without electricity are weird. Many groups have tried to live without government, which have succeeded at scale?

beepbooptheory 5y ago

Like that one episode of TNG where they wake up all the people from the nineties, but it's one guy who keeps asking Picard how much BTC is at, how the blockchain is doing, etc. edit: https://youtu.be/XQQYbKT_rMg https://youtu.be/XQQYbKT_rMg

Yizahi 5y ago

Math is indeed there, multiplication, division etc. I just fail to understand why is that important for you? Incentives are also there - the infamous FOMO. I think it's not a thing to be proud of.

dr-detroit 5y ago

Maybe you should not always try and be the worst thing society will allow you without jail time.

Barrin92 5y ago

Instrumentalizing a show whose essential message was that living in a post-scarcity society is possible and where people pursue their interests genuinely rather than in the name of economic gain to make a case for crypto is so on brand with the actual post we're commenting on you could put it directly on the website Let's just listen to the man himself for a second, while we're talking about star trek and money: https://youtu.be/PV4Oze9JEU0?t=143 https://youtu.be/PV4Oze9JEU0?t=143

neilparikh 5y ago
It's even more ironic, because the entire point of NFTs is to create artificial scarcity in an environment without scarcity (the digital world). I guess you could argue that NFTs isn't the main aspect of cryptocurrencies, and I think you'd be right, but I find cryptocurrency projects in general seem to lean heavily into the scarcity aspect, and promise that early adopters will be able to cash in that scarcity later.
- 3np 5y ago
  > I guess you could argue that NFTs isn't the main aspect of cryptocurrencies Not even a major aspect. Just like neither are the main aspect(s) of Web3. Despite what con artists and puppet farms on Reddit and Twitter are pushing. (The web3 moniker in its current form came years before the first NFT contract)

sergiotapia 5y ago

Bitcoin has merit. There is a finite amount of it, and that's it. There is no more bitcoin after the whole 23? million are "minted". Alt-coins/shitcoins are grifts, they can be worth what people want to pay but anyone can spin up a new coin. And they do. Pump and dump for chumps. NFTs are the same. Anyone can create an NFT for whatever. There is no value in it whatsoever.

guessbest 5y ago

Captain Kirk was a better captain.

pje 5y ago

They literally don't have money in Star Trek. Their society considers itself to have advanced beyond the need for money entirely. This couldn't be further from the future envisioned by web3 people, who seem to want to further financialize, marketize, and commodify all of human experience and interaction.

hvgk 5y ago

I’ve spent enough time in fintech to know where this ends. The interest in it is purely because of the vast problems it creates are opportunities to gain something. These are numerous compared to the roughly single benefit and the technology itself. It’s yet another market created to manipulate arbitrary wealth tokens. The masters are different that is all.

avgcorrection 5y ago

I’ve never really watched Star Trek either. Now my impression of it is that people watch it for the same reason that they watch The West Wing;[1] to fawn at the Leadership and Decorum of the Wise men (and women!). (Probably not though.) I’d rather interact with cosplaying nerds than with those haughty-taughty process and procedure geeks. [1]: I of course have not watched that, either.