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> if Bitcoin ends up being one mankind’s most important inventions That seems unlikely.

s1gnp0st 4y ago
It's really disheartening how much unjustified disdain is heaped upon Bitcoin the technology by commenters here. You're going to claim you're certain that a solution to the Byzantine generals problem will have no useful consequences?
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > You're going to claim you're certain that a solution to the Byzantine generals problem will have no useful consequences? Yes.
  - s1gnp0st 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - culi 4y ago
      Solutions to the problem have been proposed since at least 1982. if you wanna get theoretical Bitcoin isn't even a game-theoretically unique In fact that's probably the biggest criticism in general of the technology. What does it solve? I can't really think of a single use-case that couldn't have been solved using other, existing technologies. It seems like it's just adding extra constraints with no actual benefits. And it never lives up to the supposed benefits. In terms of centralization that's turned out to pretty consistently be a false promise. One Bitcoin transaction uses about as much electricity as a US household uses in a month so it's not scalable or sustainable. The cryptography techniques aren't particularly novel except maybe the way they were put together. But you can usually get a lot more use out of just using those cryptography techniques without all the added baggage. The idea that it provides anonymity is also very false. If anything, quite the opposite. The one thing it does somewhat well is introduce scarcity where there previously was none. Which is often a major cost rather than a benefit but even when it's the main benefit it's not really an effective tool (see all the examples of non-tech-literate people buying "NFTs" as art and then finding that that encrypted URL they just bought got taken down)
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  Now we're moving the goalposts from: > one mankind’s most important inventions to merely > useful consequences Sure, maybe there are useful consequences, especially if you need to defy governments or whatever. But surely not something in the same league of importance as, say, fire, the wheel, writing, powered flight, the hammer, steel, math, or even Quicksort.
  - s1gnp0st 4y ago
    "The grain mill was merely an application of the wheel and uninteresting by itself". Absolute embittered curmudgeons.
    - EamonnMR 4y ago
      Are you responding to the right comment?
- alex_sf 4y ago
  I like bitcoin. I use it. It's cryptobro nonsense to claim anything to do with it is in the 'top 100 non-literary' documents ever produced by humanity.
- palata 4y ago
  The one thing that blockchain is good at is cryptocurrencies. Whether we want cryptocurrencies or not is a separate question (I don't). For absolutely everything else, blockchain is a worse solution than technology that already existed before.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  Solutions to the Byzantine generals problem have been long known before that (PBFT was in 1999 for instance). The interesting part of bitcoin was the “permission-less BFT algorithm” (because other algorithm at the time required to know the list of nodes up-front) through proof of work and game theory”. The game theory part is only applicable to Austrian-style (scarce money) crypto-“currencies”, not to other cases of byzantine generals problem (it only works because everybody has financial incentives in the robustness of the system), and even in that specific niche, the proof of work scheme has been abandoned by pretty much everybody else in favor of proof of stakes (which isn't really a permission-less system anymore).
- pyrale 4y ago
  It seems that some people really build their world around one element, and become obsessed about it that they make outlandish claims about its utility. Based on the simple reality that bitcoin wouldn't exist without them, we can find a couple seminal papers of cryptography that had way more impact than this white paper. To name a few : Claude Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication: https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shanno... Rivest, Shamir and Adelman's Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.pdf Diffie and Hellman's New Direction in Cryptography: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf And that's the first three that come to my mind.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies only solve the byzantine generals problem inside of the blockchain itself. The second anything has to touch the real world you are right back to needing trust. It's robust against a pointless thing. It's like building a bridge that can withstand the earth being swallowed by the sun. Sure the bridge will survive but that's pointless, and the energy and material being spent on that bridge has a billion better uses.
deleted 4y ago
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gnu8 4y ago
Perhaps not the most beautiful or noble thing, but it certainly has been impactful, like the invention of nerve gas.

It's really disheartening how much unjustified disdain is heaped upon Bitcoin the technology by commenters here. You're going to claim you're certain that a solution to the Byzantine generals problem will have no useful consequences?

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> You're going to claim you're certain that a solution to the Byzantine generals problem will have no useful consequences? Yes.
- s1gnp0st 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - culi 4y ago
    Solutions to the problem have been proposed since at least 1982. if you wanna get theoretical Bitcoin isn't even a game-theoretically unique In fact that's probably the biggest criticism in general of the technology. What does it solve? I can't really think of a single use-case that couldn't have been solved using other, existing technologies. It seems like it's just adding extra constraints with no actual benefits. And it never lives up to the supposed benefits. In terms of centralization that's turned out to pretty consistently be a false promise. One Bitcoin transaction uses about as much electricity as a US household uses in a month so it's not scalable or sustainable. The cryptography techniques aren't particularly novel except maybe the way they were put together. But you can usually get a lot more use out of just using those cryptography techniques without all the added baggage. The idea that it provides anonymity is also very false. If anything, quite the opposite. The one thing it does somewhat well is introduce scarcity where there previously was none. Which is often a major cost rather than a benefit but even when it's the main benefit it's not really an effective tool (see all the examples of non-tech-literate people buying "NFTs" as art and then finding that that encrypted URL they just bought got taken down)
EamonnMR 4y ago
Now we're moving the goalposts from: > one mankind’s most important inventions to merely > useful consequences Sure, maybe there are useful consequences, especially if you need to defy governments or whatever. But surely not something in the same league of importance as, say, fire, the wheel, writing, powered flight, the hammer, steel, math, or even Quicksort.
- s1gnp0st 4y ago
  "The grain mill was merely an application of the wheel and uninteresting by itself". Absolute embittered curmudgeons.
  - EamonnMR 4y ago
    Are you responding to the right comment?
alex_sf 4y ago
I like bitcoin. I use it. It's cryptobro nonsense to claim anything to do with it is in the 'top 100 non-literary' documents ever produced by humanity.
palata 4y ago
The one thing that blockchain is good at is cryptocurrencies. Whether we want cryptocurrencies or not is a separate question (I don't). For absolutely everything else, blockchain is a worse solution than technology that already existed before.
littlestymaar 4y ago
Solutions to the Byzantine generals problem have been long known before that (PBFT was in 1999 for instance). The interesting part of bitcoin was the “permission-less BFT algorithm” (because other algorithm at the time required to know the list of nodes up-front) through proof of work and game theory”. The game theory part is only applicable to Austrian-style (scarce money) crypto-“currencies”, not to other cases of byzantine generals problem (it only works because everybody has financial incentives in the robustness of the system), and even in that specific niche, the proof of work scheme has been abandoned by pretty much everybody else in favor of proof of stakes (which isn't really a permission-less system anymore).
pyrale 4y ago
It seems that some people really build their world around one element, and become obsessed about it that they make outlandish claims about its utility. Based on the simple reality that bitcoin wouldn't exist without them, we can find a couple seminal papers of cryptography that had way more impact than this white paper. To name a few : Claude Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication: https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shanno... Rivest, Shamir and Adelman's Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.pdf Diffie and Hellman's New Direction in Cryptography: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/publications/24.pdf And that's the first three that come to my mind.
mrguyorama 4y ago
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies only solve the byzantine generals problem inside of the blockchain itself. The second anything has to touch the real world you are right back to needing trust. It's robust against a pointless thing. It's like building a bridge that can withstand the earth being swallowed by the sun. Sure the bridge will survive but that's pointless, and the energy and material being spent on that bridge has a billion better uses.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gnu8 4y ago

Perhaps not the most beautiful or noble thing, but it certainly has been impactful, like the invention of nerve gas.