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We use almost as much energy to dry our clothes. You have to argue that Bitcoin isn't useful as well to argue that it's wasteful. Most people do this by sayin

by ftlio 5y ago

We use almost as much energy to dry our clothes. You have to argue that Bitcoin isn't useful as well to argue that it's wasteful. Most people do this by saying there are alternatives to Bitcoin, but none of them have the same security profile. They're not equivalent. As someone who would be fine in recyclable coveralls a la The Dispossessed, I think clothes drying is a waste. Thankfully I'm not the arbiter of what's useful to everyone.

e-clinton 5y ago
If Proof of work uses as much energy as drying clothes, I’d imagine it means processors are putting out as much heat as a dryer. Could we combine these? Bitcoin dryer, anyone?
webkike 5y ago
If we’re going to compare bitcoin to dry clothes, I’d rather have dry clothes but ten orders of magnitude
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Do you care so little about the planet that you can't just hang your clothes and wait a little while longer for them to dry?
  - webkike 5y ago
    Sometimes it’s raining
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      Cool! So you hang your clothes otherwise, right? Or are you just a hypocrite that will readily use an unnecessarily energy wasteful product for some light convenience while berating something that uses energy that other people, but not you, consider to be valuable. Or do you want to have an actual adult conversation about how we can actually solve GHG emissions by properly internalizing the costs of polluting via these dirty sources, rather than wasting political and social capital on a thing that uses <1% of the worlds energy, and if it disappeared tomorrow would have almost zero effect on our planet's climate trajectory?
      - webkike 5y ago
        You can try to frame it like it is all you want, but drying clothes is not using “unnecessarily energy wasteful product for some light convenience”. This isn’t just one person using a dryer to dry their socks, this is the total cost of drying clothes, and that isn’t something that doesn’t massively improves everyone’s life. If you’re going to spend that amount of energy the base requirement of usefulness of the outcome in my opinion very well could be that all of our clothes are dried.
  - cute_boi 5y ago
    This assumes, clothes can dry easily during winters or rainy season. Also, in modern city we are starting to live densely. Some people live in 1 or 2 rooms and they don't have accessibility to dry their clothes. And drying clothes in room has its own problem like latent heat issue.
    - PretzelPirate 5y ago
      As a counter argument: I live in a small NYC apartment with a washing machine but no dryer. I wash my clothes and then hang them in the bathroom to dry. It’s inconvenient but it works year-round and my clothes get dry.
dagmx 5y ago
Are you comparing the cost of everyone in the world who uses dryers to dry their clothes versus the cost of everyone in the world who's using Bitcoin? What's the ratio of people?
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Actually no. Clothes dryers in the US alone (5% of humans) use the same order of magnitude electricity as global bitcoin mining. This claim is based on this back of the envelope estimate from the guy who led the decentralized identity project at Microsoft, ION, which also uses bitcoin as a foundational layer, https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1361342448014778369 https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1361342448014778369 And these US clothes dryers are probably responsible for much more carbon emissions, because where people choose to live doesn't necessarily correspond with the cheapest or greenest energy sources, unlike bitcoin mining which is ludicrously mobile.
  - ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
    > Clothes dryers in the US alone (5% of humans) use the same order of magnitude electricity as global bitcoin mining. A paper about the wasteful energy usage of dryers: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ene_14060901a.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ene_14060901a.pdf On average, Americans dry five loads of laundry a week, spending about $100 a year to power a typical electric dryer, or $40 a year to operate a similar natural gas dryer. In total, dryers now represent a $9 billion annual national energy bill – about 6% of residential electricity consumption and 2% of residential natural gas consumption. They consume as much electricity per year – 60 billion kWh – as the entire state of Massachusetts, and are responsible for 40 million metric tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions. By any measure, their energy use and environmental impact are large enough to be worth doing something about. 60 billion kWh are 60 TWh, this site claims Bitcoin needs 125TWh (theoretical min. is 50TWh, max. 292TWh). https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index Of course that does mean we should stop with _both_.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
speedgoose 5y ago
Since some people waste energy, it’s okay to waste energy too ?
cute_boi 5y ago
This is a fallacy I don't like. How about we solve both? Stopping bitcoin mining and drying using efficient technique if possible. We should dry cloth by hanging it if we can. If people aren't doing it, then I think we should discourage it. It just becomes essential during rainy or winter season where we can't dry clothes. And with modern dense urban style of living, which I disdain, has made people dependence on such tools because there is less space for gardening, drying clothes etc… And drying cloth by hanging require rotation otherwise color may fade etc. The problem with bitcoin is its incentive to burn energy. Miners are competition to burn energy. While drying clothes, we aren't in competition with each other. One is game, the other is not. That's a big difference, IMHO. Yes, traditional financial system is also bad that it requires loads of server etc. to maintain. But again, there is no incentive to burn energy just to win probability games. How about we acknowledge that bitcoin is really problematic. Just like with everything, it has some miniscule benefits like it provides a way to live in certain countries like Argentina. But, just like with engineering difficulties, we should be able to weight its advantage and disadvantage. Bitcoin is clearly a bane for this world. If you had compared drying clothes with 10x energy and increment of it as people dry more using machines, it would be analogous, but as of now your argument doesn't hold water.
- ftlio 5y ago
  It's not a safe assumption that other forms of money exist that are less problematic than Bitcoin. People can and can't buy things using certain kinds of money largely because of the results of war or the threat of war. I'm always amazed at people that are confident the US Dollar machine is more ethical than Bitcoin. There's simply too much to consider to know for sure, and the experiment of making a better version of money is probably at least worth as much as drying clothes, especially when you consider it's as equally opt-in.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > It's not a safe assumption that other forms of money exist that are less problematic than Bitcoin. I believe it is. Replace BTC with an identical system except with a reward curve that isn't logarithmic and you have a strictly superior system for the world, except that early adopters no longer make off with gazillions of dollars.
dv_dt 5y ago
How has no one proposed a bitcoin machine using waste heat for a clothes dryer yet?
woah 5y ago
> who would be fine in recyclable coveralls What's stopping you?
- ftlio 5y ago
  What's stopping me from declaring that people who have normal clothes drying habits are unethical compared to my proposed alternative, devoid of any attempt to understand its potential externalities? I'm not a butthole.
timeon 5y ago
I use 0 energy to dry my clothes. Same with most people I know. But even if that was not the case, you are just using distraction. The proof of waste is still there.

by ftlio 5y ago

e-clinton 5y ago

If Proof of work uses as much energy as drying clothes, I’d imagine it means processors are putting out as much heat as a dryer. Could we combine these? Bitcoin dryer, anyone?

webkike 5y ago

If we’re going to compare bitcoin to dry clothes, I’d rather have dry clothes but ten orders of magnitude

anonporridge 5y ago
Do you care so little about the planet that you can't just hang your clothes and wait a little while longer for them to dry?
- webkike 5y ago
  Sometimes it’s raining
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    Cool! So you hang your clothes otherwise, right? Or are you just a hypocrite that will readily use an unnecessarily energy wasteful product for some light convenience while berating something that uses energy that other people, but not you, consider to be valuable. Or do you want to have an actual adult conversation about how we can actually solve GHG emissions by properly internalizing the costs of polluting via these dirty sources, rather than wasting political and social capital on a thing that uses <1% of the worlds energy, and if it disappeared tomorrow would have almost zero effect on our planet's climate trajectory?
    - webkike 5y ago
      You can try to frame it like it is all you want, but drying clothes is not using “unnecessarily energy wasteful product for some light convenience”. This isn’t just one person using a dryer to dry their socks, this is the total cost of drying clothes, and that isn’t something that doesn’t massively improves everyone’s life. If you’re going to spend that amount of energy the base requirement of usefulness of the outcome in my opinion very well could be that all of our clothes are dried.
- cute_boi 5y ago
  This assumes, clothes can dry easily during winters or rainy season. Also, in modern city we are starting to live densely. Some people live in 1 or 2 rooms and they don't have accessibility to dry their clothes. And drying clothes in room has its own problem like latent heat issue.
  - PretzelPirate 5y ago
    As a counter argument: I live in a small NYC apartment with a washing machine but no dryer. I wash my clothes and then hang them in the bathroom to dry. It’s inconvenient but it works year-round and my clothes get dry.

dagmx 5y ago

Are you comparing the cost of everyone in the world who uses dryers to dry their clothes versus the cost of everyone in the world who's using Bitcoin? What's the ratio of people?

anonporridge 5y ago
Actually no. Clothes dryers in the US alone (5% of humans) use the same order of magnitude electricity as global bitcoin mining. This claim is based on this back of the envelope estimate from the guy who led the decentralized identity project at Microsoft, ION, which also uses bitcoin as a foundational layer, https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1361342448014778369 https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1361342448014778369 And these US clothes dryers are probably responsible for much more carbon emissions, because where people choose to live doesn't necessarily correspond with the cheapest or greenest energy sources, unlike bitcoin mining which is ludicrously mobile.
- ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
  > Clothes dryers in the US alone (5% of humans) use the same order of magnitude electricity as global bitcoin mining. A paper about the wasteful energy usage of dryers: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ene_14060901a.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ene_14060901a.pdf On average, Americans dry five loads of laundry a week, spending about $100 a year to power a typical electric dryer, or $40 a year to operate a similar natural gas dryer. In total, dryers now represent a $9 billion annual national energy bill – about 6% of residential electricity consumption and 2% of residential natural gas consumption. They consume as much electricity per year – 60 billion kWh – as the entire state of Massachusetts, and are responsible for 40 million metric tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions. By any measure, their energy use and environmental impact are large enough to be worth doing something about. 60 billion kWh are 60 TWh, this site claims Bitcoin needs 125TWh (theoretical min. is 50TWh, max. 292TWh). https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index Of course that does mean we should stop with _both_.
  - anonporridge 5y ago

speedgoose 5y ago

Since some people waste energy, it’s okay to waste energy too ?

cute_boi 5y ago

This is a fallacy I don't like. How about we solve both? Stopping bitcoin mining and drying using efficient technique if possible. We should dry cloth by hanging it if we can. If people aren't doing it, then I think we should discourage it. It just becomes essential during rainy or winter season where we can't dry clothes. And with modern dense urban style of living, which I disdain, has made people dependence on such tools because there is less space for gardening, drying clothes etc… And drying cloth by hanging require rotation otherwise color may fade etc. The problem with bitcoin is its incentive to burn energy. Miners are competition to burn energy. While drying clothes, we aren't in competition with each other. One is game, the other is not. That's a big difference, IMHO. Yes, traditional financial system is also bad that it requires loads of server etc. to maintain. But again, there is no incentive to burn energy just to win probability games. How about we acknowledge that bitcoin is really problematic. Just like with everything, it has some miniscule benefits like it provides a way to live in certain countries like Argentina. But, just like with engineering difficulties, we should be able to weight its advantage and disadvantage. Bitcoin is clearly a bane for this world. If you had compared drying clothes with 10x energy and increment of it as people dry more using machines, it would be analogous, but as of now your argument doesn't hold water.

ftlio 5y ago
It's not a safe assumption that other forms of money exist that are less problematic than Bitcoin. People can and can't buy things using certain kinds of money largely because of the results of war or the threat of war. I'm always amazed at people that are confident the US Dollar machine is more ethical than Bitcoin. There's simply too much to consider to know for sure, and the experiment of making a better version of money is probably at least worth as much as drying clothes, especially when you consider it's as equally opt-in.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > It's not a safe assumption that other forms of money exist that are less problematic than Bitcoin. I believe it is. Replace BTC with an identical system except with a reward curve that isn't logarithmic and you have a strictly superior system for the world, except that early adopters no longer make off with gazillions of dollars.

dv_dt 5y ago

How has no one proposed a bitcoin machine using waste heat for a clothes dryer yet?

woah 5y ago

> who would be fine in recyclable coveralls What's stopping you?

ftlio 5y ago
What's stopping me from declaring that people who have normal clothes drying habits are unethical compared to my proposed alternative, devoid of any attempt to understand its potential externalities? I'm not a butthole.

timeon 5y ago

I use 0 energy to dry my clothes. Same with most people I know. But even if that was not the case, you are just using distraction. The proof of waste is still there.