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"Being a sci-fi author is about being open to possibilities. When a writer loses that ability to see what might be, maybe it’s time for him to step aside and ma
by chasing 13y ago
"Being a sci-fi author is about being open to possibilities. When a writer loses that ability to see what might be, maybe it’s time for him to step aside and make way for a new generation of authors who still can."
What an insulting way to conclude an article.
"If you lack the vision to agree with me about Bitcoin, maybe you're old and terrible at your job."
- mccr8 13y agoIt should be noted that Charles Stross wrote a book, Neptune's Brood, where a bitcoin-like currency is used to finance interstellar colonization, so a lack of vision is not really a problem.
- polarix 13y agoI suspect Stross may have been trolling, just to try to ward off the existential risk that bitcoin and autonomous economic entities edge us closer to. Either that or he's holding btc himself and figures that fomenting debate will be good for the value levitation.
- rxp 13y ago"Slow money" in Neptune's Brood is a digital currency, and is confusingly referred to as a "bitcoin" a few times, but it's actually a really fascinating idea that's very different from BTC. The gist of it, if I remember it right, is that all transactions are authenticated by an interstellar 2-phase commit handshake. The distances involved keep the value of the currency stable, because transactions can take decades to process, and the direction of the signal is actually used as a form of authentication, to guard against (literal) MITM attacks. The goal of slow money was to have a currency that was stable enough to finance multi-century interstellar colonization projects.
- wyager 13y agoIndeed, that was some unnecessary ad hominem. However, it shouldn't detract from the blog post's other points, some of which were well-reasoned. As we watch out for fallacies, we need to be careful not to invoke the fallacy fallacy :)