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Come on - you didn't "simply list facts" you stated wildly confident and extreme opinions and then you labeled them facts. That you can't or won't recognize thi

Come on - you didn't "simply list facts" you stated wildly confident and extreme opinions and then you labeled them facts. That you can't or won't recognize this is what I'm talking about. "Literally no new thing", "I look at reality" (implying I only make stuff up), "wishful thinking", "precisely zero knowledge", "Without fail in 100% of cases this is the case", etc. etc. There are interesting conversations to have on this topic, but it's hard to have them with someone only willing to engage in this way. It requires some amount of willingness to be uncertain of what you currently believe and you're not. The more you reply, the more you confirm my initial suspicion of bad faith. I'm not some blind crypto nut (at best I'm cautiously optimistic), but I find it hard to engage with the baseline anti-crypto hostility on HN which makes interesting conversation hard.

dmitriid 5y ago
> Come on - you didn't "simply list facts" you stated wildly confident and extreme opinions and then you labeled them facts They are facts: 1. "Gated community is centralized by default" is a fact. 2. "Literally no new thing has come out of this" is a fact. 3. "Not to mention use cases where you wouldn't want to advertise your membership in a gated community" is a statment that has a fact in it: "use cases where you wouldn't want to advertise your membership in a gated community" And in the comment you're replying to I've also stated some facts besides just opinion. > There are interesting conversations to have on this topic, but it's hard to have them with someone only willing to engage in this way. Please show me a single "interesting conversation" where anyone from the crypto community has anything to say beyond "there are new interesting new things you just have to believe in possibility that someday maybe this will happen". > It requires some amount of willingness to be uncertain of what you currently believe and you're not. I'm definitely uncertain about many things. Once again, there's a difference between being uncertain and blindly believing in snake oil. It's on the sellers of snake oil to prove their wild claims, not on me. > The more you reply, the more you confirm my initial suspicion of bad faith. Yup. More comments without zero substance on the "interesting new capabilites" and "interesting discussions". > I'm not some blind crypto nut (at best I'm cautiously optimistic), but I find it hard to engage with the baseline anti-crypto hostility on HN which makes interesting conversation hard. If there was any such interesting conversation, "not blind crypto nuts" would have already had it and had, for example, links to such discussions. In over a decade no such discussion has materialised for very obvious reasons.
- gonehome 5y ago
  Previous threads that go into details/have interesting conversation about specific capabilities so we don't have to rehash all of it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30729538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30729538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630008 If I had to pick one general one, probably this: https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skeptic https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skepti... This list is good: https://danromero.org/crypto-reading/ https://danromero.org/crypto-reading/ For your specifics: 1. I'm not sure I get this point - the ability to verify membership is decentralized and anyone can build things leveraging that. In the urbit case this works well for auth/ID. Ownership can also be transferred without a central authority (this is new). 2. This isn't true (Urbit IDs are another easy example), but decentralized state consensus is something you get from blockchain that didn't exist before. That's a new thing (and lots of other new things come from that idea). 3. Anonymity is a different feature sure, not a guarantee in any of this. The reason I mostly avoided engaging on the specifics is because the rest of your comment and the way you engage suggests it won't be worthwhile.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > The reason I mostly avoided engaging on the specifics is because the rest of your comment and the way you engage suggests it won't be worthwhile. The reason is simple: 99.9999999% of all discussions with crypto people follow the same pattern. After a decade of snake oil, you don't expect snake oil salesmen to engage in anything productive. > Previous threads that go into details/have interesting conversation about specific capabilities so we don't have to rehash all of it here These reiterate a few false dichotomies and false equivalences as in "Banks don't won’t protect you from wire fraud" === "same in crypto". Not the same. There is some value in "having your money with you always", but fails to account for two things: the need for immediate and continuous internet access, and security (https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/) > if I had to pick one general one, probably this: which is void of any interesting discussion, doesn't address any problems, and reiterates that "bitcoin is a speculative asset" > This list is good I may skim through it, but I won't hold my breath. > For your specifics How it started: "The interesting bit is gated community access/easily verifiable ownership of membership" How it's going: "we build this OS with blockchain built in, we verify identities there". Also: "nonymity is a different feature sure" Authentication, authorisation and memberships have overlapping concerns but are not the same thing. And this is the thing I absolutely loathe in these "productive conversations": - when faced with facts or reality, the narrative is always shifted. We were talking about memberships? "Well, let me talk about something else" - complex issues are just brushed aside as being non-important, non-essential, trivial, or that they will be magically solved. Anonymity? "oh, it's a different feature set" - literally no one is pausing to stop for even a second beyond the absolutely obvious use cases. Because the next set of use cases is merely immediately obvious. In a world where everyone is tracking everyone anonymity is essential. "Ownership can be transferred without central authority"? What recourse is there when that happens without the owner's consent (even people developing "smart contracts" currently fall prey to errors in their code logic)? What happens when gated communities (which are centralised by default) ban you based on something completely unrelated because all of your membership info is easily available and verifiable (your church group outs you as gay, your teacher's union fires you because you're a furry, you can't find a job because of a felony offence)? --- So, after more than a decade of snake oil, I will call snake oil for what it is until proven otherwise. No amount of "you just have to believe", erm, sorry, "you have to be curious" will convince me otherwise.

dmitriid 5y ago

> Come on - you didn't "simply list facts" you stated wildly confident and extreme opinions and then you labeled them facts They are facts: 1. "Gated community is centralized by default" is a fact. 2. "Literally no new thing has come out of this" is a fact. 3. "Not to mention use cases where you wouldn't want to advertise your membership in a gated community" is a statment that has a fact in it: "use cases where you wouldn't want to advertise your membership in a gated community" And in the comment you're replying to I've also stated some facts besides just opinion. > There are interesting conversations to have on this topic, but it's hard to have them with someone only willing to engage in this way. Please show me a single "interesting conversation" where anyone from the crypto community has anything to say beyond "there are new interesting new things you just have to believe in possibility that someday maybe this will happen". > It requires some amount of willingness to be uncertain of what you currently believe and you're not. I'm definitely uncertain about many things. Once again, there's a difference between being uncertain and blindly believing in snake oil. It's on the sellers of snake oil to prove their wild claims, not on me. > The more you reply, the more you confirm my initial suspicion of bad faith. Yup. More comments without zero substance on the "interesting new capabilites" and "interesting discussions". > I'm not some blind crypto nut (at best I'm cautiously optimistic), but I find it hard to engage with the baseline anti-crypto hostility on HN which makes interesting conversation hard. If there was any such interesting conversation, "not blind crypto nuts" would have already had it and had, for example, links to such discussions. In over a decade no such discussion has materialised for very obvious reasons.

gonehome 5y ago
Previous threads that go into details/have interesting conversation about specific capabilities so we don't have to rehash all of it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30729538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30729538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630008 If I had to pick one general one, probably this: https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skeptic https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skepti... This list is good: https://danromero.org/crypto-reading/ https://danromero.org/crypto-reading/ For your specifics: 1. I'm not sure I get this point - the ability to verify membership is decentralized and anyone can build things leveraging that. In the urbit case this works well for auth/ID. Ownership can also be transferred without a central authority (this is new). 2. This isn't true (Urbit IDs are another easy example), but decentralized state consensus is something you get from blockchain that didn't exist before. That's a new thing (and lots of other new things come from that idea). 3. Anonymity is a different feature sure, not a guarantee in any of this. The reason I mostly avoided engaging on the specifics is because the rest of your comment and the way you engage suggests it won't be worthwhile.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > The reason I mostly avoided engaging on the specifics is because the rest of your comment and the way you engage suggests it won't be worthwhile. The reason is simple: 99.9999999% of all discussions with crypto people follow the same pattern. After a decade of snake oil, you don't expect snake oil salesmen to engage in anything productive. > Previous threads that go into details/have interesting conversation about specific capabilities so we don't have to rehash all of it here These reiterate a few false dichotomies and false equivalences as in "Banks don't won’t protect you from wire fraud" === "same in crypto". Not the same. There is some value in "having your money with you always", but fails to account for two things: the need for immediate and continuous internet access, and security (https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/) > if I had to pick one general one, probably this: which is void of any interesting discussion, doesn't address any problems, and reiterates that "bitcoin is a speculative asset" > This list is good I may skim through it, but I won't hold my breath. > For your specifics How it started: "The interesting bit is gated community access/easily verifiable ownership of membership" How it's going: "we build this OS with blockchain built in, we verify identities there". Also: "nonymity is a different feature sure" Authentication, authorisation and memberships have overlapping concerns but are not the same thing. And this is the thing I absolutely loathe in these "productive conversations": - when faced with facts or reality, the narrative is always shifted. We were talking about memberships? "Well, let me talk about something else" - complex issues are just brushed aside as being non-important, non-essential, trivial, or that they will be magically solved. Anonymity? "oh, it's a different feature set" - literally no one is pausing to stop for even a second beyond the absolutely obvious use cases. Because the next set of use cases is merely immediately obvious. In a world where everyone is tracking everyone anonymity is essential. "Ownership can be transferred without central authority"? What recourse is there when that happens without the owner's consent (even people developing "smart contracts" currently fall prey to errors in their code logic)? What happens when gated communities (which are centralised by default) ban you based on something completely unrelated because all of your membership info is easily available and verifiable (your church group outs you as gay, your teacher's union fires you because you're a furry, you can't find a job because of a felony offence)? --- So, after more than a decade of snake oil, I will call snake oil for what it is until proven otherwise. No amount of "you just have to believe", erm, sorry, "you have to be curious" will convince me otherwise.