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Like many people back then, I also found the whole proof-of-work / blockchain concept to be interesting from a theoretical computer science / distributed system

by ohazi 5y ago

Like many people back then, I also found the whole proof-of-work / blockchain concept to be interesting from a theoretical computer science / distributed systems perspective. But these days, I can't help but think that we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first. Humans are the AGI, and we're going to happily use more and more energy to play this stupid game for as long as it looks like there's a profit to be made, even if the global outcome is to our own detriment. If we want this mess to go away, we need to find a way to change the incentives globally.

reincarnate0x14 5y ago
The leviathan is loose and it's never going back in a pen until the whole thing collapses under the weight of the fraud. Even legal restrictions on it will only help a little bit as enough moneyed interests are invested in keeping the hype train rolling. I've consulted for several companies trying to do blockchain based non-money things and can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math fields will ever associate them with anything but cryptocurrency (and thus scams) for the rest of our lifetimes.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math fields will ever associate them with anything but cryptocurrency (and thus scams) How so? "Private blockchains" (with no general access + cryptographic proof of commitment) are practically indistinguishable from plain old Merkle trees, and yet I don't see many people arguing that git is some sort of "scam" even outside the CS and math community.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    No one called git a “blockchain” until the cryptocurrency fad. The point is that the zero-trust aspect is useless if you can control the source of truth.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      It’s it a blockchain one any definition. The current commit does not have a hash of the previous commit.
  - reincarnate0x14 5y ago
    See that's my point. People who understand what Merkle trees are mostly understand the various utilities in using them, but that has very little to do with what "normal people" think of when they hear blockchain.
- dvt 5y ago
  Anecdotal, but I hosted a friend and her husband at my place a few months ago (Facebook Product Manager). She was telling me that her team of brilliant engineers are all either leaving to go to TikTok or crypto startups. Don't kid yourself, people follow the money.
  - jonathan-adly 5y ago
  - redwood 5y ago
    Well FB is the new Phillip Morris so it's relative
  - tekknik 5y ago
    Following the money does not mean success. Without market adoption they may well be just destroying their careers.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Capital in general is a paperclip maximizer, not just Bitcoin. All investors are slaves to their capital that takes a mind of its own, a sort of real-world Egregore. Bitcoin is a flagrant example of this property of capital.
- mib32 5y ago
  I also like to think of it as something analogous to drug addiction with the dopamine positive feedback loop.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Crypto is the crystal meth of finance. Capital completely divorced from labor.
    - dvt 5y ago
      In that sense, crypto is exactly the same as forex, money markets, equities markets, futures markets, derivatives markets, etc. We haven't been coupling markets with labor for like 300 years now.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        Not at all. Forex yes, futures yes, derivatives yes - these are speculative or hedging instruments. Not investments. I've never heard anyone advocate people HODL /NQ futures in their investment account and borrow against them as an investment strategy. Let alone calling them "the future of money." But this is basically what crypto is. Money market funds aren't investments, they're cash equivalents, but they still facilitate lending. They're the present of money. Equities are positive-sum instruments where you purchase a fractional ownership stake in a business that employs people and uses the revenue from their business to return capital to investors in the form of dividends, buybacks or intrinsic value appreciation. Their performance is inherently tied to labor. These are not at all the same thing.
        5y ago
jupp0r 5y ago
Incentives are key to bring the technology back into the realm of usefulness (in the grand scheme of things). Externalities need to be priced into energy costs. In principle there is no problem with using the electric power of a small country for proof of work purposes, as long as the production of that energy is not harmful to everybody via global warming or pollution. In the end, more efficient ways of achieving the same result will prevail in a well functioning market. Currently everything is skewed because crypto is mined with cheap coal power that the global society is subsidizing by paying for externalities. I don't think crypto is unique in this. Gold and diamond production is also pretty expensive and useless (apart from their industrial applications, which are limited in comparison to their use to store value).
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Incentives are key to bring the technology back into the realm of usefulness (in the grand scheme of things). Externalities need to be priced into energy costs. In principle there is no problem with using the electric power of a small country for proof of work purposes, as long as the production of that energy is not harmful to everybody via global warming or pollution. I disagree. Pricing externalities into energy costs isn't sufficient, because proof of work is basically pissing massive amounts of irreplaceable energy resources into the wind in order to play a stupid, unnecessary game. I think it's better those resources stay in the ground or be used for a more productive purposes, and making miners pay more for energy isn't going to change the fundamental wastefulness of their activity.
  - jupp0r 5y ago
    You convinced me. Eventually it should be forbidden (or made prohibitively expensive) to use fossil fuels for energy generation or transportation purposes because the reserves that are left should be used in the chemical industry and others. I didn't want to defend mining (it is wasteful, even when powered by 100% renewables), just wanted to point out that most of the current harm to society is caused by its fossil fuel electricity generation needs.
donkeydoug 5y ago
> we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first that's a perfect way to describe it. thanks. sigh.
rwilson4 5y ago
TIL: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer
zamalek 5y ago
> we need to find a way to change the incentives globally. We are spitting distance from post-scarcity in the developed world. The problem is that we are addicted to power and status (which both feed on scarcity).
epolanski 5y ago
> If we want this mess to go away, we need to find a way to change the incentives globally. I think there should be more political pressure behind banning crypto currencies and companies that deal with them should be cut out from banking system. I would be even okay with just doing it for proof of work coins, if people want to keep doing their libertarian experiment it's okay for me, but at least remove this insane incentive to use more and more resources.
stefek99 5y ago
> "we need to find a way to change the incentives globally" Shameless plug: basex.com > BaseX measures "triple bottom line" - People Planet Prosperity - new definition of value - accounting for environmental impact and wellbeing. It's is all about incentives.
tekknik 5y ago
You need to define AGI. https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html

by ohazi 5y ago

reincarnate0x14 5y ago

The leviathan is loose and it's never going back in a pen until the whole thing collapses under the weight of the fraud. Even legal restrictions on it will only help a little bit as enough moneyed interests are invested in keeping the hype train rolling. I've consulted for several companies trying to do blockchain based non-money things and can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math fields will ever associate them with anything but cryptocurrency (and thus scams) for the rest of our lifetimes.

zozbot234 5y ago
> can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math fields will ever associate them with anything but cryptocurrency (and thus scams) How so? "Private blockchains" (with no general access + cryptographic proof of commitment) are practically indistinguishable from plain old Merkle trees, and yet I don't see many people arguing that git is some sort of "scam" even outside the CS and math community.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  No one called git a “blockchain” until the cryptocurrency fad. The point is that the zero-trust aspect is useless if you can control the source of truth.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    It’s it a blockchain one any definition. The current commit does not have a hash of the previous commit.
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  See that's my point. People who understand what Merkle trees are mostly understand the various utilities in using them, but that has very little to do with what "normal people" think of when they hear blockchain.
dvt 5y ago
Anecdotal, but I hosted a friend and her husband at my place a few months ago (Facebook Product Manager). She was telling me that her team of brilliant engineers are all either leaving to go to TikTok or crypto startups. Don't kid yourself, people follow the money.
- jonathan-adly 5y ago
- redwood 5y ago
  Well FB is the new Phillip Morris so it's relative
- tekknik 5y ago
  Following the money does not mean success. Without market adoption they may well be just destroying their careers.

sudosysgen 5y ago

Capital in general is a paperclip maximizer, not just Bitcoin. All investors are slaves to their capital that takes a mind of its own, a sort of real-world Egregore. Bitcoin is a flagrant example of this property of capital.

mib32 5y ago
I also like to think of it as something analogous to drug addiction with the dopamine positive feedback loop.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Crypto is the crystal meth of finance. Capital completely divorced from labor.
  - dvt 5y ago
    In that sense, crypto is exactly the same as forex, money markets, equities markets, futures markets, derivatives markets, etc. We haven't been coupling markets with labor for like 300 years now.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Not at all. Forex yes, futures yes, derivatives yes - these are speculative or hedging instruments. Not investments. I've never heard anyone advocate people HODL /NQ futures in their investment account and borrow against them as an investment strategy. Let alone calling them "the future of money." But this is basically what crypto is. Money market funds aren't investments, they're cash equivalents, but they still facilitate lending. They're the present of money. Equities are positive-sum instruments where you purchase a fractional ownership stake in a business that employs people and uses the revenue from their business to return capital to investors in the form of dividends, buybacks or intrinsic value appreciation. Their performance is inherently tied to labor. These are not at all the same thing.
      - 5y ago

jupp0r 5y ago

Incentives are key to bring the technology back into the realm of usefulness (in the grand scheme of things). Externalities need to be priced into energy costs. In principle there is no problem with using the electric power of a small country for proof of work purposes, as long as the production of that energy is not harmful to everybody via global warming or pollution. In the end, more efficient ways of achieving the same result will prevail in a well functioning market. Currently everything is skewed because crypto is mined with cheap coal power that the global society is subsidizing by paying for externalities. I don't think crypto is unique in this. Gold and diamond production is also pretty expensive and useless (apart from their industrial applications, which are limited in comparison to their use to store value).

tablespoon 5y ago
> Incentives are key to bring the technology back into the realm of usefulness (in the grand scheme of things). Externalities need to be priced into energy costs. In principle there is no problem with using the electric power of a small country for proof of work purposes, as long as the production of that energy is not harmful to everybody via global warming or pollution. I disagree. Pricing externalities into energy costs isn't sufficient, because proof of work is basically pissing massive amounts of irreplaceable energy resources into the wind in order to play a stupid, unnecessary game. I think it's better those resources stay in the ground or be used for a more productive purposes, and making miners pay more for energy isn't going to change the fundamental wastefulness of their activity.
- jupp0r 5y ago
  You convinced me. Eventually it should be forbidden (or made prohibitively expensive) to use fossil fuels for energy generation or transportation purposes because the reserves that are left should be used in the chemical industry and others. I didn't want to defend mining (it is wasteful, even when powered by 100% renewables), just wanted to point out that most of the current harm to society is caused by its fossil fuel electricity generation needs.

donkeydoug 5y ago

> we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first that's a perfect way to describe it. thanks. sigh.

rwilson4 5y ago

TIL: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer

zamalek 5y ago

> we need to find a way to change the incentives globally. We are spitting distance from post-scarcity in the developed world. The problem is that we are addicted to power and status (which both feed on scarcity).

epolanski 5y ago

> If we want this mess to go away, we need to find a way to change the incentives globally. I think there should be more political pressure behind banning crypto currencies and companies that deal with them should be cut out from banking system. I would be even okay with just doing it for proof of work coins, if people want to keep doing their libertarian experiment it's okay for me, but at least remove this insane incentive to use more and more resources.

stefek99 5y ago

> "we need to find a way to change the incentives globally" Shameless plug: basex.com > BaseX measures "triple bottom line" - People Planet Prosperity - new definition of value - accounting for environmental impact and wellbeing. It's is all about incentives.

tekknik 5y ago

You need to define AGI. https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html