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There are many crypto-enthusiasts for whom no level of rigor will ever satisfy them despite being obsessed with various "whitepapers" which are mostly marketing

There are many crypto-enthusiasts for whom no level of rigor will ever satisfy them despite being obsessed with various "whitepapers" which are mostly marketing fluff. They endlessly defer to various whataboutism's until you find out they are taking an inherently political position (usually some sort of neo-libertarian) and hence the "merits" of the proposed currency _really_ only apply to people who are disenfranchised by existing economic systems. Usually, little is said of how to improve existing systems as that challenges the notion that the status quo is so flawed that it needs to be replaced wholesale. Any idea how to refute crypto to these folks?

capableweb 5y ago
Why do you have to refute cryptocurrencies to anyone? Make up your own mind and leave it at that. I'm atheist, but I'm not gonna go around and try to refute religion just because I don't believe in it, although I do think it does more harm than good. People will believe in what they want to believe in, and there is little you can do to change their mind if it's already made up.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  I was doing just this until they came up with that silly "web 3.0" moniker which is trying to attract developers for smart contracts. As a developer, I have zero desire to code for any of that stuff as it sounds like a security nightmare. Hopefully other developers here reach similar conclusions in light of good discussion on HN; but that could be naive as you suggest.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    But then you've haven't been doing that at all? "web3" has been around as a concept since before Ethereum was even launched, plenty of people in the space have been talking about it for ages (internet time), and it is nothing new. What is new is the internet outrage against it, but easy to avoid that outrage too. If you have zero desire for something, just stay away? I don't want to write Java code, so I don't. Hopefully other developers will do whatever the fuck they want to do. Wanna work on cryptocurrencies? Go for it. Wanna write Java code? Sure, why not! Why care about what others are doing?
    - ShamelessC 5y ago
      I don't have anything else to add to this discussion that I haven't already said. Cheers!
  - digitailor 5y ago
    The best part is, in the pure Web 3.0 vision, http:// http:// would be deprecated. It's somewhat absurd. The description of a proposed post-WWW Internet as "the Web" is incoherent. That being said, I think there are some critically important ideas involved. I came up with the term Internet 4 as a substitute but that's also not exactly accurate.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      What is this "pure Web 3.0 vision" you talk about? As originally meant by Gavin Wood, Web3 is an idea or concept, not a particular technology. If it's using http (the protocol) or not has nothing to do with that particular meaning of Web3, so maybe you're referring to something else, as I have not yet heard about this "pure Web 3.0 vision" you talk about.
      - digitailor 5y ago
        You're correct, it's not an actual thing. I'm using it as a device to summarize the kinds of protocols and networks that are part of common visions for what Web 3.0 constitutes. There is no canonical "pure Web 3.0" vision I can point to. But http:// http:// doesn't play strongly in most advanced visions, especially if you subscribe to the hypothesis that wallets will move on from the web browser for average users for security reasons. Speculatively, wallets could possibly become a kind of browser themselves, with http://'s http://'s utility becoming more marginalized eventually. I'm not referring to Gavin Wood's specific conception or the associated Polkadot and its foundation's specific usage of the term. FWIW, I'm really trying to dissect the name and not the vision and perhaps not doing it that well. As far as I'm concerned, the usage of the term predates even bitcoin and originally meant Semantic Web. Content-addressable networks like IPFS or Arweave could be seen as related to that conception, but it's a bit of a stretch.
digitailor 5y ago
Apologies, but not really. I became "involved" with bitcoin in 2013 somewhat accidentally through a job in behavioral finance. I was at the first bitcoin conference and was one of the few willing to talk to the "suits" who were there. Some of the neo-libertarian stuff used to frustrate me and I would refute certain points, only to uselessly draw ire from groups. What I've found is like most people's relationship with money in general, a person's beliefs on the subject are usually rooted in their emotions. The area has always been technologically interesting to me so I tend to ignore everything but identifiable FUD, because that's part of what I do generally.

capableweb 5y ago

Why do you have to refute cryptocurrencies to anyone? Make up your own mind and leave it at that. I'm atheist, but I'm not gonna go around and try to refute religion just because I don't believe in it, although I do think it does more harm than good. People will believe in what they want to believe in, and there is little you can do to change their mind if it's already made up.

ShamelessC 5y ago
I was doing just this until they came up with that silly "web 3.0" moniker which is trying to attract developers for smart contracts. As a developer, I have zero desire to code for any of that stuff as it sounds like a security nightmare. Hopefully other developers here reach similar conclusions in light of good discussion on HN; but that could be naive as you suggest.
- capableweb 5y ago
  But then you've haven't been doing that at all? "web3" has been around as a concept since before Ethereum was even launched, plenty of people in the space have been talking about it for ages (internet time), and it is nothing new. What is new is the internet outrage against it, but easy to avoid that outrage too. If you have zero desire for something, just stay away? I don't want to write Java code, so I don't. Hopefully other developers will do whatever the fuck they want to do. Wanna work on cryptocurrencies? Go for it. Wanna write Java code? Sure, why not! Why care about what others are doing?
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    I don't have anything else to add to this discussion that I haven't already said. Cheers!
- digitailor 5y ago
  The best part is, in the pure Web 3.0 vision, http:// http:// would be deprecated. It's somewhat absurd. The description of a proposed post-WWW Internet as "the Web" is incoherent. That being said, I think there are some critically important ideas involved. I came up with the term Internet 4 as a substitute but that's also not exactly accurate.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    What is this "pure Web 3.0 vision" you talk about? As originally meant by Gavin Wood, Web3 is an idea or concept, not a particular technology. If it's using http (the protocol) or not has nothing to do with that particular meaning of Web3, so maybe you're referring to something else, as I have not yet heard about this "pure Web 3.0 vision" you talk about.
    - digitailor 5y ago
      You're correct, it's not an actual thing. I'm using it as a device to summarize the kinds of protocols and networks that are part of common visions for what Web 3.0 constitutes. There is no canonical "pure Web 3.0" vision I can point to. But http:// http:// doesn't play strongly in most advanced visions, especially if you subscribe to the hypothesis that wallets will move on from the web browser for average users for security reasons. Speculatively, wallets could possibly become a kind of browser themselves, with http://'s http://'s utility becoming more marginalized eventually. I'm not referring to Gavin Wood's specific conception or the associated Polkadot and its foundation's specific usage of the term. FWIW, I'm really trying to dissect the name and not the vision and perhaps not doing it that well. As far as I'm concerned, the usage of the term predates even bitcoin and originally meant Semantic Web. Content-addressable networks like IPFS or Arweave could be seen as related to that conception, but it's a bit of a stretch.

digitailor 5y ago

Apologies, but not really. I became "involved" with bitcoin in 2013 somewhat accidentally through a job in behavioral finance. I was at the first bitcoin conference and was one of the few willing to talk to the "suits" who were there. Some of the neo-libertarian stuff used to frustrate me and I would refute certain points, only to uselessly draw ire from groups. What I've found is like most people's relationship with money in general, a person's beliefs on the subject are usually rooted in their emotions. The area has always been technologically interesting to me so I tend to ignore everything but identifiable FUD, because that's part of what I do generally.