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> The idea to get rid of having to trust centralized organizations might sound tempting, but it doesn’t work: Blockchains don’t get rid of “trust”, they just ch

> The idea to get rid of having to trust centralized organizations might sound tempting, but it doesn’t work: Blockchains don’t get rid of “trust”, they just change, who has to be trusted. > More precisely: The trust in institutions controlled by humans and bound by established laws and rules is instead replaced — by unconditional trust in the infallibility of code (“in code we trust” is a popular phrase in the scene). As code is written by humans, it’s seldom actually infallible. > But even if all code was without mistakes, blockchains can’t do anything against threats like scams, fraud, hacking of devices with keys for the blochain or just plain old typos in a coin transfer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy "The perfect solution fallacy is a related informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists or that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented"

Eisfunke 4y ago
As explained in the text: the point isn't that these problems aren't solved by blockchain, they're amplified. E.g.: scams existed without blockchain, but now they're forever and permanently engraved into the blockchain. Code was always flawed, but now a bug isn't just a bug, it's a bug in a smart contract with potentially disastrous consequences that can never be properly fixed.
- Grustaf 4y ago
  This is not necessarily a flaw in the technology, it's just one way in which it differs from what we are used to. I think most coiners, who skew strongly libertarian, would argue that it's up to you to make sure your smart contracts work.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > I think most coiners, who skew strongly libertarian, would argue that it's up to you to make sure your smart contracts work. Ah yes, it's up to the user to review and debug code written in an esoteric programming language to make sure that it works... When even creators of said contracts can't find bugs in their code and fall prey to mistakes (sometimes after multiple audits)
    - Grustaf 4y ago
      Yes exactly.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        "This is not necessarily a flaw in technology". When is the last time you needed to debug the contract when you buy coffee?
        Grustaf 4y ago
        Why would you need to involve a smart contract to buy coffee?
        dmitriid 4y ago
        Coffee is just an extreme example. The actual example I usually go for is selling/buying an apartment. I'm currently in Sweden, and I've gone through the process twice now. The contracts were several pages if clear text that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of Swedish could understand. Good luck checking that everything is correct with a "smart contract" version.
        Grustaf 4y ago
        I've also bought property in Sweden, it's very simple. No need to involve a lawyer even. So where do smart contracts come in? Who would want to use a smart contract to buy an apartment? Unless possible the apartment deed was stored on the blockchain or something, but that is highly unlikely. Real estate is a very poor fit, since it's very heavily regulated in numerous ways. It's not just about ownership, and anonymous ownership of real estate is definitely a non-goal. It's an anti-goal.
        dmitriid 4y ago
        So, you keep coming up with "smart contracts are not a good fit for anything". Which really doesn't invalidate my original point.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  I'm not sure why smart contracts don't come with signature (or just an address) - this way they can be updated by authorizing party but nobody else. By a transaction involving a contractcoin perhaps. You surely can't expect to author perfect code and set it in stone.
  - Grustaf 4y ago
    If it's immutable, it only needs to be audited once.
    - thriftwy 4y ago
      Have you ever written any code?
      - Grustaf 4y ago
        Yes, 10 hours a day, I work at a FAANG. Just pointing out the advantage. Clearly there are also disadvantages, and most people think the latter dwarf the former. I just want an honest and nuanced discussion.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  This is almost a political argument. Because it's the same argument about free speech. In the end, you either believe in the individual's choice, and individuals will do really stupid and bad stuff, and they will also fall for scams, but do you give the individual freedom of choice to fall for scams and speak freely? This is a high risk option, perhaps. But it is also likely to be most effective at delivering progress to humanity, considering the difference between innovation over the last 200 years, has it happened in places with more freedom or less? On the other hand, you have the crowd obsessed with control, obsessed with how the idiot needs to be protected from their own stupidity, and the crowd needs to be protected from the speech of the idiot. But somehow when you control things, in the end they start being used by those in power to cement their power, and suddenly you have less freedom, less creativity, and more suffering. But it's nice for some, because everything is under control. Make your choice which side you are on.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    You're making the fallacy of conflating two unrelated concepts and drawing conclusions from that.
    - cloutchaser 4y ago
      I've laid out how they are linked. Please debate my points rather than saying it's a fallacy, which adds nothing to the conversation and is basically an ad hominem attack like this (see, I can use these debating words too!)
  - nicbou 4y ago
    > But it is also likely to be most effective at delivering progress to humanity How so? So far, crypto seems to amplify its worst trait: greed. It takes its destructive properties to new levels. > you have the crowd obsessed with control These controls are there for a reason. Controls create trust, and trust removes friction. Creating a stable currency and protecting people's money from scammers has nothing to do with censoring speech. It's a false equivalence. > you have less freedom, less creativity, and more suffering You also get this in an environment where the slightest mishap can irreversibly empty your savings account. > used by those in power to cement their power That's a problem with capital, not the currency with which it's expressed.
andrewclunn 4y ago
If they argued that Blockchain is not mature, and so (from a personal cost benefit analysis) is inferior to centralized systems, they would be on point. There is a difference between straight up pseudo science and novel developments. Conflating the two is nothing new.
HeckFeck 4y ago
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Terrible is also the enemy of good.
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    Yep. That would be the legacy (predatory, inflationary) financial system.
    - FabHK 4y ago
      As opposed to Bitcoin, whose money supply grows with over 1.7% a year currently, giving miners around $50m a day to burn coal with.
      - HeckFeck 4y ago
        Limited and deflationary currency is a good thing, because it limits power and disincentivises impulsive decisions. An umlimited supply of currency like that underpinning our current financial system is hugely predatory and benefits only those in power and those closest to them. Fiat incentivises huge environemntal destruction, you can just print more money and allocate it to those closest to you, who are inventivised to spend it as quickly as possible because it is always losing value. This encourages short term thinking and quick turnarounds, which results in mass produced crap that is horrible for the environment, or long drawn out wars that are even worse for it. At the bottom of the pyramid, rampant consumerism is caused by this same reason. A rational, limited digital currency is a miracle. It will incentivise the opposite. Because you can't just "print more" and watch its value halve over your lifetime, you'll be much more careful in how it is spent. Look at how many shoddy products there are now, and how much consumer habits have changed since currencies moved off the gold standard. I loathe having my finances tied up in such a mess. We have a chance to right this wrong with all the benefits of an open and distributed system. That's the promise of BTC.
MauranKilom 4y ago
Not sure if that fallacy applies, given that we have found ways to combat scams, fraud, etc. with the existing solutions (which are also not perfect, but at least make an attempt to cater to the fallibility of humans). In that regard, blockchain is a step backwards. Whether "do not require trust in a centralized authority" (with caveats regarding the protocol itself set aside) is more important than "useful for humans conducting human business" (without extra layers that re-introduce centralized authority) is up to everyone to decide themselves.
stkdump 4y ago
The blockchain is relying on the perfect solution fallacy. It tries to solve a problem that is mostly theoretical, does a very incomplete job and creates bigger problems than it is ever able to solve. The 'redeeming' factor is that on the way it makes some people rich.
DarkWiiPlayer 4y ago
The post points out several shortcomings of a system that is objectively worse in almost every aspect than the existing alternatives. Calling this a Nirvana fallacy borders on bad faith.
deleted 4y ago
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Eisfunke 4y ago

As explained in the text: the point isn't that these problems aren't solved by blockchain, they're amplified. E.g.: scams existed without blockchain, but now they're forever and permanently engraved into the blockchain. Code was always flawed, but now a bug isn't just a bug, it's a bug in a smart contract with potentially disastrous consequences that can never be properly fixed.

Grustaf 4y ago
This is not necessarily a flaw in the technology, it's just one way in which it differs from what we are used to. I think most coiners, who skew strongly libertarian, would argue that it's up to you to make sure your smart contracts work.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > I think most coiners, who skew strongly libertarian, would argue that it's up to you to make sure your smart contracts work. Ah yes, it's up to the user to review and debug code written in an esoteric programming language to make sure that it works... When even creators of said contracts can't find bugs in their code and fall prey to mistakes (sometimes after multiple audits)
  - Grustaf 4y ago
    Yes exactly.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      "This is not necessarily a flaw in technology". When is the last time you needed to debug the contract when you buy coffee?
      - Grustaf 4y ago
        Why would you need to involve a smart contract to buy coffee?
        dmitriid 4y ago
        Coffee is just an extreme example. The actual example I usually go for is selling/buying an apartment. I'm currently in Sweden, and I've gone through the process twice now. The contracts were several pages if clear text that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of Swedish could understand. Good luck checking that everything is correct with a "smart contract" version.
        Grustaf 4y ago
        I've also bought property in Sweden, it's very simple. No need to involve a lawyer even. So where do smart contracts come in? Who would want to use a smart contract to buy an apartment? Unless possible the apartment deed was stored on the blockchain or something, but that is highly unlikely. Real estate is a very poor fit, since it's very heavily regulated in numerous ways. It's not just about ownership, and anonymous ownership of real estate is definitely a non-goal. It's an anti-goal.
        dmitriid 4y ago
        So, you keep coming up with "smart contracts are not a good fit for anything". Which really doesn't invalidate my original point.
thriftwy 4y ago
I'm not sure why smart contracts don't come with signature (or just an address) - this way they can be updated by authorizing party but nobody else. By a transaction involving a contractcoin perhaps. You surely can't expect to author perfect code and set it in stone.
- Grustaf 4y ago
  If it's immutable, it only needs to be audited once.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    Have you ever written any code?
    - Grustaf 4y ago
      Yes, 10 hours a day, I work at a FAANG. Just pointing out the advantage. Clearly there are also disadvantages, and most people think the latter dwarf the former. I just want an honest and nuanced discussion.
cloutchaser 4y ago
This is almost a political argument. Because it's the same argument about free speech. In the end, you either believe in the individual's choice, and individuals will do really stupid and bad stuff, and they will also fall for scams, but do you give the individual freedom of choice to fall for scams and speak freely? This is a high risk option, perhaps. But it is also likely to be most effective at delivering progress to humanity, considering the difference between innovation over the last 200 years, has it happened in places with more freedom or less? On the other hand, you have the crowd obsessed with control, obsessed with how the idiot needs to be protected from their own stupidity, and the crowd needs to be protected from the speech of the idiot. But somehow when you control things, in the end they start being used by those in power to cement their power, and suddenly you have less freedom, less creativity, and more suffering. But it's nice for some, because everything is under control. Make your choice which side you are on.
- andrepd 4y ago
  You're making the fallacy of conflating two unrelated concepts and drawing conclusions from that.
  - cloutchaser 4y ago
    I've laid out how they are linked. Please debate my points rather than saying it's a fallacy, which adds nothing to the conversation and is basically an ad hominem attack like this (see, I can use these debating words too!)
- nicbou 4y ago
  > But it is also likely to be most effective at delivering progress to humanity How so? So far, crypto seems to amplify its worst trait: greed. It takes its destructive properties to new levels. > you have the crowd obsessed with control These controls are there for a reason. Controls create trust, and trust removes friction. Creating a stable currency and protecting people's money from scammers has nothing to do with censoring speech. It's a false equivalence. > you have less freedom, less creativity, and more suffering You also get this in an environment where the slightest mishap can irreversibly empty your savings account. > used by those in power to cement their power That's a problem with capital, not the currency with which it's expressed.

andrewclunn 4y ago

If they argued that Blockchain is not mature, and so (from a personal cost benefit analysis) is inferior to centralized systems, they would be on point. There is a difference between straight up pseudo science and novel developments. Conflating the two is nothing new.

HeckFeck 4y ago

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

onion2k 4y ago
Terrible is also the enemy of good.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  Yep. That would be the legacy (predatory, inflationary) financial system.
  - FabHK 4y ago
    As opposed to Bitcoin, whose money supply grows with over 1.7% a year currently, giving miners around $50m a day to burn coal with.
    - HeckFeck 4y ago
      Limited and deflationary currency is a good thing, because it limits power and disincentivises impulsive decisions. An umlimited supply of currency like that underpinning our current financial system is hugely predatory and benefits only those in power and those closest to them. Fiat incentivises huge environemntal destruction, you can just print more money and allocate it to those closest to you, who are inventivised to spend it as quickly as possible because it is always losing value. This encourages short term thinking and quick turnarounds, which results in mass produced crap that is horrible for the environment, or long drawn out wars that are even worse for it. At the bottom of the pyramid, rampant consumerism is caused by this same reason. A rational, limited digital currency is a miracle. It will incentivise the opposite. Because you can't just "print more" and watch its value halve over your lifetime, you'll be much more careful in how it is spent. Look at how many shoddy products there are now, and how much consumer habits have changed since currencies moved off the gold standard. I loathe having my finances tied up in such a mess. We have a chance to right this wrong with all the benefits of an open and distributed system. That's the promise of BTC.

MauranKilom 4y ago

Not sure if that fallacy applies, given that we have found ways to combat scams, fraud, etc. with the existing solutions (which are also not perfect, but at least make an attempt to cater to the fallibility of humans). In that regard, blockchain is a step backwards. Whether "do not require trust in a centralized authority" (with caveats regarding the protocol itself set aside) is more important than "useful for humans conducting human business" (without extra layers that re-introduce centralized authority) is up to everyone to decide themselves.

stkdump 4y ago

The blockchain is relying on the perfect solution fallacy. It tries to solve a problem that is mostly theoretical, does a very incomplete job and creates bigger problems than it is ever able to solve. The 'redeeming' factor is that on the way it makes some people rich.

DarkWiiPlayer 4y ago

The post points out several shortcomings of a system that is objectively worse in almost every aspect than the existing alternatives. Calling this a Nirvana fallacy borders on bad faith.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]