4 ms·

What are the huge assumptions in my response above?

• MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  You assume he's a lecturer - he's not. He worked at Stanford Libraries on digital preservation, but is now retired. The talk itself was written for a business audience originally. He's just a guest speaker called in the last minute. He does make that fairly clear in the introduction. You assume that this is pushing an ideological agenda on the behalf of Stanford, or the state of California, for which I see no evidence. You assume the fact he doesn't mention nuclear is evidence of ideological bias. He clearly states that carbon emissions need to come down now. Nuclear can't do that. I have no idea what his actual stance on nuclear power is, but you cannot assume he is a priori opposed to nuclear power because he doesn't talk about it in this talk. You assume that the links he is providing are further evidence of pushing an ideology. The Lawfare link is making the legal case that money transmission is occurring, which is precisely the point he is making. The fact that a co-author on a paper on decentralization of mining may have made a lot of money out of launching his own coin in no way diminishes the observation that "a Byzantine quorum system of size 20 could achieve better decentralization than proof-of-work mining at a much lower resource cost." It's quite clear he doesn't think that the externalities of crypto currencies can be easily mitigated. But you assume a lot in order to make your case that there is something nefarious and ideological going on.