6 ms·
> “Less trust, more truth.” What a neat platitude that means absolutely nothing. As a society, over, oh I don't know, like 15000 years, we figured out the the
by dvt 5y ago
> “Less trust, more truth.”
What a neat platitude that means absolutely nothing. As a society, over, oh I don't know, like 15000 years, we figured out the the best way to enforce truth is via some sort of centralized institution: the court of law.
> They could, right. They sort of do—there’s the star thing that you can only do once per day. But guess what? They're a profit-motivated company. So if you pay Tinder enough, you can just send as many stars as you want.
Wait, crypto miners aren't profit-motivated? Maybe we should introduce Mr. Wood to flashbots[1] -- a "sub-network" of Ethereum miners (a fork of geth) who's entire purpose for existing is front-running (for a price, of course). Truth as long as you can pay for it -- got it. Web3 is end-stage capitalism and we've been down this road in the early 1900s. Yawn.
[1] https://github.com/flashbots/pm https://github.com/flashbots/pm
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y agoThe best way to enforce truth is via mathematics. A court can declare 1+1!=2, which does not make it so. Courts are fundamentally human constructs. I find the ancient universal truths of numbers to be better.
- loktarogar 5y agoIf someone manages to steal money from a crypto wallet (hacking, social engineering, whatever), does that make it theirs by the ancient universal truth of numbers? Money is a fundamentally human construct.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y agoPractically, yes. Whomever has the private key can make a transaction. Proof of knowledge (of a private key) is equivalent to ownership. This is how it works. Money is a human construct. But it can live on a system backed by physical universal quantities like computation, to remove the need for human trust constructions.
- loktarogar 5y agoIt doesn't remove the need, it just handwaves it away. You can't just ignore theft, and it's definitely not a positive aspect of a system like that.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y agoCryptocurrency is meant to be analogous to physical cash. Cash is not designed to prevent theft, most theft of monetary instruments throughout history has been through confiscation of gold or cash. They exist as physical quantities in the physical universe -- anti-theft features (as opposed to anti-counterfeiting) measures do not exist, nor can they. It is just a rock or some hemp-cotton paper. Likewise, cryptocurrency exists in the computation universe as a state in a peer to peer consensus, and controlled by knowledge of large integers in the integer universe. Anti-theft features do not exist, nor can they. Its just an integer. Its not about a positive or negative aspect, they do not apply, anti-theft as a concept is an out-of-band mechanism. Primarily a state violence backed model. It works for most. Cash, Gold and Bitcoin, its just a boring token of value. It is the ecosystem around it that provides the ability to enforce 'anti-theft'.
- danbolt 5y agoI mean, there’s a lot of mathematics that are social constructs to me. Like, I’ve never sat down and “proven” the calculus I learned in university.