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Vitalik Buterin’s philosophical essays: they’re not good
- gjvc 4y agoI've always thought that the bitcoin paper isn't as well-written as some people make it out to be.
- TraitorJoes 4y ago
- slater 4y agoLuckily for us, your hn posts don't matter, either.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Kranar 4y agoIt wasn't written by Vitalik. I don't think anyone praises the original Bitcoin paper because of the quality of its prose, but because it introduced the world to an incredibly innovative idea and did so in such a simple and straight forward way it left many people wondering what they never thought of such a thing before. When did you read it?
- gjvc 4y agoYou miss the point. Comic response though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- exolymph 4y agoContext note: David Gerard is the dude who tried to get Scott Alexander canceled. He fed a lot of dirt to that NYT reporter. Whether you think his crusade is legitimate is up to you, but I figure y'all might want to know who you're reading.
- codewithcheese 4y agoThanks, didnt know that. What was his stated motivation?
- davidgerard 4y agoI'm eager to find out!
- exolymph 4y agoI'm not about to pull up your many, many SneerClub comments. You can speak for yourself. In fact, usually you're excited to do so — have fun :)
- davidgerard 4y ago"the dude" implies I actually personally did it, reached in and deleted his blog or whatever your claim is. "go google" is not much of a response when you made the ill-specified claim. What was your specific claim? Note that I'm not the only one asking you. And the important point, since you made it on this post: how does your claim relate in any way to Buterin?
- soulofmischief 4y agoYou know exactly why contextualization and characterization is important, don't pretend there isn't merit to such an accusation if indeed true.
- deleted 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y agoVitalik Buterin is indeed a smart guy with his heart in the right place, but every time he opens his mouth the nerd in me winces and prepares for impact. Even when cryptocurrency interested me, I found his talks to be weirdly insufferable and content-adverse. It's interesting to see more people share the opinion that his musings aren't really hard-hitting.
- TraitorJoes 4y ago
- mikewave 4y agoIs there any evidence Buterin is on the spectrum, rather than just being a Standard Nerd?
- Kranar 4y agoDo you have specific examples, preferably of something within the past 5 years? I think his writing and speeches are very well thought out and insightful. Often the criticisms people make of him are superficial and because he approaches topics from a very different perspective than what is traditional, but I'd be very happy if you can link to a specific blog or talk that you recall being insufferable. Rather than being content-adverse, his writing and talks are actually very dense and informative.
- wmf 4y agoMaybe Vitalik should take Balaji's advice and write under a pseudonym. I wonder how much attention his writing would get.
- throwaway563 4y agoBalaji is is a double standard prick. He speaks about democratizing banking in the US while he supports totally backward culture and interference of religion in his home town India. He is such a prick he tweets them in the Indian language so he can keep misleading. I don't know what else he is up with the pseudonym.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jubalfh 4y ago
- lazzlazzlazz 4y agoI didn't have a lot of respect for David Girard before this, and this essay really made me certain: David Girard is not very sharp. I revisited a few of Vitalik's recent essays and in all honesty believe they're lucid[1] and content-rich[2] even when he strays outside his domain of specialization[3]. Girard seems like a mid-tier but highly-focused motivated reasoner[4] who is working on a specific brand of anti-tech journalism. Nothing to see here really, even if you dislike crypto and Vitalik's projects. [1]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/09/09/ens.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/09/09/ens.html [2]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html [3]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
- cosmicexplorer 4y agoHis name is spelled "Gerard".
- weare138 4y ago[flagged]
- kerkeslager 4y agoDid you actually read [3]? I think that contains lots of good examples of what Gerard describes as "bizarre conspiracy theory economics". That article centers around a political map by Balaji, which presents this weird idea that the New York Times (and woke-ists) controls the US in a balance of three competing ideologies, the other two being crypto-anarchists and communists. Even if we ignore that the political compass is an obvious oversimplification, Balaji clearly doesn't even understand the political compass: the communists are presented as being authoritarian social centrists, why the NYT is presented as being just anarchist as the crypto-anarchists, despite the self-evident incorrectness of also saying that they control the US. Buterin himself seems to understand that a lot of what Balaji is saying is, well, crazy, so a big part of that article is giving alternate arguments for his idea of network states so that people can still agree with Buterin, without agreeing with Balaji. But, while Buterin does present 4 critiques of Balaji, notably absent from those critiques is this bizarre map of the political landscape. Does Buterin actually agree with Balaji's map? And even if we generously assume Buterin doesn't agree with Balaji on that, why even bring Balaji into this? The ideas Buterin actually does espouse didn't originate with Balaji--surely Buterin could have found a less schizoid starting point for his presentation. As for your links [1] and [2]: sure, those are great, but Gerard is specifically talking about Buterin's philosophical writings. While I do agree with Gerard's point that some basic education could have prevented some of Buterin's bad technical ideas, I generally do think Buterin is extremely technically intelligent, and I don't see anything that indicates that Gerard would disagree. Finally [4]: never, ever, is calling someone out for motivated reasoning a good argument. You're also guilty of motivated reasoning, as is every human that ever reasoned. Showing my own hand here: I tend to disagree with Gerard on almost everything, but I'll at least give Gerard credit that my disagreements with him tend to be pretty nuanced. Buterin, on the other hand, I tend to agree with on technical points, which is most of his writing--but his philosophy tends to be pretty wacko, as Gerard points out.
- chrisbigelow 4y ago> Buterin comes from a long tradition of Silicon Valley special smart boys, who have had it hammered into them that domain expertise — i.e., actually knowing stuff — pales into insignificance compared to pulling ideas out of your backside by virtue of your superior intelligence and upbringing and social position. I detest this worldview. New knowledge is formed through creative conjecture and criticism. The creation of new ideas being restricted to only experts, those who "actually know stuff" shrinks the pool of creators of new knowledge. What we should strive for is better explanations of reality, not a restriction on who can make those explanations.
- voxl 4y agoExcept the point being made is that only the rich and affluent get to make creative decisions. Though the experts who get any traction also belong to this group in my experience. A CMU Professor just draws more eyes than one from The University of Minnesota.
- dmix 4y agoThe "boy genius" cliche in Silicon Valley journalism is flawed and sometimes unhelpful, but it's not because it's strictly limited to "the rich and affluent"? Not sure where you're (or the author) is getting that. Vitalik wasn't some rich kid who went to Harvard and was groomed by VCs. He was gambled on because he had some interesting ideas. The fact the media loves Mozart types also doesn't mean that their cliches are true or representative of the culture either. It just shows what the readers of Wired and pop-science want to hear.
- balsam 4y agoGerard used the subtle term “social position”. People might take that to be “affluence” but it isnt necessary so. For example, a technically promising white child from any californian public school would be in a vastly better social position (from SV media’s POV) than a rank and file googler.
- skybrian 4y ago
- jerojero 4y agoPersonally I've always enjoyed Vitalik's blog. It's definitely brought a new perspective on a lot of things and that's more than enough for me. If not technically impressive, or even "right", I take it these as what they are: personal ramblings. Dude's not really trying to convince anyone, as far as I can tell, but more like sharing his thoughts. It's fine. I appreciate it.
- jekrb 4y agoThis just seems like a weird personal attack on someones ideas and accomplishments.
- ETH_start 4y agoButerin's writing is absolutely phenomenal. It is highly technical and yet accessible, and all-encompassing yet precise and detailed. Buterin's best quality is in understanding complex topics and articulating that understanding. I attribute the quality of his writing to effort and not some inherent skill. Skill only takes you so far. Effort takes you most of the way there. You can find a collection of his articles here: https://vitalik.ca/ https://vitalik.ca/ An example of one of his high-quality explanations, 'An Incomplete Guide to Rollups': https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
- markeibes 4y agoThanks ETH_start
- kerkeslager 4y agoButerin's a great writer on technical topics, which is all you've pointed out here. But the critique in the article which you're responding to, is about Buterin's writing on philosophical topics.
- davidgerard 4y agoyeah, I'm certainly not questioning at any point that Buterin knows how Ethereum works ;-) in fact, the explanation of Ethereum mining in ''Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain'' is based on a Reddit comment where Buterin responded to me directly to correct my confusion.
- bubino 4y agoFirst time reading this author. This critique of Vitalik being an elitist, sounds elitist to me. I didn’t have to look up nearly as many references, jargon, and philosophical terms reading Vitalik’s posts as I did for this critique of them. My impression is this guy is trying to sound smart by bashing someone who many believe is actually smart.
- jubalfh 4y ago
- imtringued 4y ago>But I am deeply unconvinced any of the ideas in Buterin’s essays are worth anything — because they’re concocted without reference to anything that people who aren’t weird cryptocurrency anarchocapitalists want. Well, in his stablecoin blog post he actively argues for negative interest rates in case the index the stablecoin replicates grows faste, you don't have to be a genius to understand negative interest rates, you have to abandon the idea of being a capitalist forever for that. The other factor is that he talks about harberger taxes which are basically just a different way of implementing X(including land) value taxes where everyone assesses the value themselves. When you consider these incredibly impactful changes it is hardly possible to see buterin as some "weird cryptoanarchist" because these two demands are nothing short of eliminating the dynastic land ownership system and ensuring permanent full employment while avoiding pointless recessions which are also just an dynastic artefact of holding money hostage. Having a higher salary with lower costs of living and not fearing unemployment isn't something that just some elite wants, elites don't need these things.