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>> As we who have spruiked for bitcoin have always said: "This is an experiment that might fail." It's fine to experiment but when Bitcoin became more mainstre

>> As we who have spruiked for bitcoin have always said: "This is an experiment that might fail." It's fine to experiment but when Bitcoin became more mainstream the kind of stupid mistakes MtGox has made are inexcusable. Ordinary people were using it and are losing money now. You can't promote a new technology and push for it's adoption by a wide audience and just call it an experiment when it fails. That's reckless. >> Heather might want to consider switching to a discipline in which experiments are even possible... And you're complaining about condescension?

moe 13y ago
MtGox != Bitcoin. Why is that so hard to understand?
grovulent 13y ago
I presume the 'you' in your statement is directed at... well... who exactly? Who was promoting Bitcoin in a way that did not foreground its extreme risk front and center? Your journalistic finger wagging will not do here. I would like to see examples. And if you provide them, then I will accept in each such case that they were indeed irresponsible. As for my last statement - I accept it comes off as no better. But I happen to actually mean it with more sincerity than you can possibly imagine. I was a PhD student in philosophy. After five years I quit because I couldn't stomach my own bullshit any more. I'm currently training myself in math, machine learning and programming. Even as a mediocre tech guy (and I don't doubt I'll ever be more than mediocre) - I'll add more value to the world than I ever did as a philosopher. I believe the same of economics.
- davidw 13y ago
  Economics is fascinating. It's a fairly new discipline, and like, say, astronomy, conducting experiments can be tricky, but throwing the whole thing out is silly. There is a lot to be learned for those interested in learning, rather than just backing up their own political view of the world.
  - grovulent 13y ago
    Well - I wasn't advocating that it should be entirely dismantled as a discipline. But I do believe it should be avoided by those with the sort of personality that would seek to make up for its flaws with their egotism. That's why I offered that suggestion to the author.
  - glimmung 13y ago
    There is another huge difference, aside from the susceptibility to experiment of the two fields - in astronomy one studies an objective natural system, in the other one studies a subjective human-driven environment. The thing that troubles me most about economics is its apparent inability to address the fact that it cannot (yet?) make even modestly accurate predictions, and seems to be in denial about the implications of that fact. To be honest, I lost all interest in economics-as-science when I learned that its theories were based on the idea that people were "rational actors" - this so flies in the face of my life experience that it simply doesn't pass the smell test. I wouldn't throw the /whole/ thing out, but we have to be realistic about its limitations, and the fact that small changes in human sentiment or worldview may potentially completely invalidate its core assumptions.
    - makomk 13y ago
      Also, in astronomy, the stars aren't actively searching for and exploiting flaws in your models, whereas in economics the main actors very definitely are.
- dnautics 13y ago
  I was cheering when you wrote that. I have a PhD in chemistry, where we actually do experiments, and am an armchair economist. I quit my science job to temporarily work for lyft while waiting on the IRS for 501(c)(3) status on a nonprofit I'm launching - and with lyft I do real-time economics, gauging supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis, and observe whether or not my models are confirmed. It would do well for academic economists to actually get that level of experiential model-testing, informal as it may be. Obviously, they don't (I did undergrad at U of Chicago, I know the econ department there). EDIT: Speaking of economic models and confirmation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867999 Also, a careful examination of the bitcoin chart reveals that it does not look like the traditional bubble (yet). Go to http://bitcoinity.org/markets http://bitcoinity.org/markets and set it to 2 years and log scale (hidden control in upper left of the graph). The chart, rather, looks like this: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html Which is a web platform growth curve.
matthewmacleod 13y ago
Can I be blunt? It's their own goddamned fault. I get that MtGox made a lot of obviously severe errors in implementation. But I'm also aware that popular wisdom has been (for some time) to avoid it. And further, it should be immediately obvious to anybody with a shred of sense that you do not hand over piles of cash (which is the closest approximation to Bitcoin) to an unregulated, opaque private enterprise. Yeah, it sucks for the people who lost money. But with the exception of a minority, they were obviously dabbling with things they did not understand. Nothing about this speaks at all to the long-term viability of Bitcoin as a currency. In fact, I think it'll probably be a benefit in the long-term - there needed to be a large, damaging demonstration of the requirement for security, and this event will cause a lot of changes.

moe 13y ago

MtGox != Bitcoin. Why is that so hard to understand?

grovulent 13y ago

I presume the 'you' in your statement is directed at... well... who exactly? Who was promoting Bitcoin in a way that did not foreground its extreme risk front and center? Your journalistic finger wagging will not do here. I would like to see examples. And if you provide them, then I will accept in each such case that they were indeed irresponsible. As for my last statement - I accept it comes off as no better. But I happen to actually mean it with more sincerity than you can possibly imagine. I was a PhD student in philosophy. After five years I quit because I couldn't stomach my own bullshit any more. I'm currently training myself in math, machine learning and programming. Even as a mediocre tech guy (and I don't doubt I'll ever be more than mediocre) - I'll add more value to the world than I ever did as a philosopher. I believe the same of economics.

davidw 13y ago
Economics is fascinating. It's a fairly new discipline, and like, say, astronomy, conducting experiments can be tricky, but throwing the whole thing out is silly. There is a lot to be learned for those interested in learning, rather than just backing up their own political view of the world.
- grovulent 13y ago
  Well - I wasn't advocating that it should be entirely dismantled as a discipline. But I do believe it should be avoided by those with the sort of personality that would seek to make up for its flaws with their egotism. That's why I offered that suggestion to the author.
- glimmung 13y ago
  There is another huge difference, aside from the susceptibility to experiment of the two fields - in astronomy one studies an objective natural system, in the other one studies a subjective human-driven environment. The thing that troubles me most about economics is its apparent inability to address the fact that it cannot (yet?) make even modestly accurate predictions, and seems to be in denial about the implications of that fact. To be honest, I lost all interest in economics-as-science when I learned that its theories were based on the idea that people were "rational actors" - this so flies in the face of my life experience that it simply doesn't pass the smell test. I wouldn't throw the /whole/ thing out, but we have to be realistic about its limitations, and the fact that small changes in human sentiment or worldview may potentially completely invalidate its core assumptions.
  - makomk 13y ago
    Also, in astronomy, the stars aren't actively searching for and exploiting flaws in your models, whereas in economics the main actors very definitely are.
dnautics 13y ago
I was cheering when you wrote that. I have a PhD in chemistry, where we actually do experiments, and am an armchair economist. I quit my science job to temporarily work for lyft while waiting on the IRS for 501(c)(3) status on a nonprofit I'm launching - and with lyft I do real-time economics, gauging supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis, and observe whether or not my models are confirmed. It would do well for academic economists to actually get that level of experiential model-testing, informal as it may be. Obviously, they don't (I did undergrad at U of Chicago, I know the econ department there). EDIT: Speaking of economic models and confirmation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867999 Also, a careful examination of the bitcoin chart reveals that it does not look like the traditional bubble (yet). Go to http://bitcoinity.org/markets http://bitcoinity.org/markets and set it to 2 years and log scale (hidden control in upper left of the graph). The chart, rather, looks like this: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html Which is a web platform growth curve.

matthewmacleod 13y ago

Can I be blunt? It's their own goddamned fault. I get that MtGox made a lot of obviously severe errors in implementation. But I'm also aware that popular wisdom has been (for some time) to avoid it. And further, it should be immediately obvious to anybody with a shred of sense that you do not hand over piles of cash (which is the closest approximation to Bitcoin) to an unregulated, opaque private enterprise. Yeah, it sucks for the people who lost money. But with the exception of a minority, they were obviously dabbling with things they did not understand. Nothing about this speaks at all to the long-term viability of Bitcoin as a currency. In fact, I think it'll probably be a benefit in the long-term - there needed to be a large, damaging demonstration of the requirement for security, and this event will cause a lot of changes.