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Gwern, as a LW'er you should know about scope insensitivity and the danger of discounting possible futures. Yes the energetic and capital cost of transmitting,

by maaku 12y ago

Gwern, as a LW'er you should know about scope insensitivity and the danger of discounting possible futures. Yes the energetic and capital cost of transmitting, validating, storing, and keeping on hand a few dozen bytes is a minor thing like a speck of dust. But it is something that must -- must!! -- be done by every full node from now until the end of the universe. How many full nodes do you think there will be in the next 100 billion years? That's a lot of specks of dust. Regarding simplicity, the complexity of the underlying protocol has no bearing on that. You can just as easily write an application where you drag and drop a file, and then it does the magic of sending p2p messages to negotiate a position in the timestamp tree, and making a micropayment to pay for it. That tool could be just as easy to use.

gwern 12y ago
> Gwern, as a LW'er you should know about scope insensitivity and the danger of discounting possible futures. One of the other things I learned there was not letting the perfect be the enemy of the better. > But it is something that must -- must!! -- be done by every full node from now until the end of the universe. Don't be ridiculous. Bitcoin is not going to run from now until the end of the universe. > How many full nodes do you think there will be in the next 100 billion years? A relatively small multiple of the number there have been. You seriously think humanity is going to exist for 100 billion years? > That tool could be just as easy to use. Yes, this hypothetical tool which does not exist, likely will not anytime soon, and which you certainly are not volunteering to write.
- maaku 12y ago
  > One of the other things I learned there was not letting the perfect be the enemy of the better. Yes, but when the better is significantly better, and only a small marginal cost, it's worth doing. > Don't be ridiculous. Bitcoin is not going to run from now until the end of the universe. In a certain form I very much believe it will be, but this is probably not the right venue for that debate. > You seriously think humanity is going to exist for 100 billion years? I plan on being around (at least) that long, though that was not the question asked. > Yes, this hypothetical tool which does not exist, likely will not anytime soon, and which you certainly are not volunteering to write. Actually I am and have: https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg03514.html https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourc...
  - gwern 12y ago
    > Yes, but when the better is significantly better, and only a small marginal cost, it's worth doing. No, it's not significantly better, and I'm not sure if it's better at all. Timestamping in the Bitcoin block chain is easy to use, cheap, convenient, highly secure, and relatively easy to explain to others. Your solution does not exist yet, and from the sound of it, even when it exists will have only one of those properties (highly secure), optimistically. > though that was not the question asked. Indeed. I don't expect humanity to be around in 100b years. I don't expect money to be around in 100b years. And I certainly don't expect SHA-256 or the elliptic curves used in Bitcoin to all remain intact over 100 billion years. (What's the longest a cryptographic hash in wide use has ever survived so far? 30 years? What about public key systems? 40 years maybe?) > Actually I am and have: I see. I upgrade my assessment of you from 'preachy asshole' to simply 'clueless person who doesn't understand people and their needs and builds castles in the air'.

by maaku 12y ago

gwern 12y ago

> Gwern, as a LW'er you should know about scope insensitivity and the danger of discounting possible futures. One of the other things I learned there was not letting the perfect be the enemy of the better. > But it is something that must -- must!! -- be done by every full node from now until the end of the universe. Don't be ridiculous. Bitcoin is not going to run from now until the end of the universe. > How many full nodes do you think there will be in the next 100 billion years? A relatively small multiple of the number there have been. You seriously think humanity is going to exist for 100 billion years? > That tool could be just as easy to use. Yes, this hypothetical tool which does not exist, likely will not anytime soon, and which you certainly are not volunteering to write.

maaku 12y ago
> One of the other things I learned there was not letting the perfect be the enemy of the better. Yes, but when the better is significantly better, and only a small marginal cost, it's worth doing. > Don't be ridiculous. Bitcoin is not going to run from now until the end of the universe. In a certain form I very much believe it will be, but this is probably not the right venue for that debate. > You seriously think humanity is going to exist for 100 billion years? I plan on being around (at least) that long, though that was not the question asked. > Yes, this hypothetical tool which does not exist, likely will not anytime soon, and which you certainly are not volunteering to write. Actually I am and have: https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg03514.html https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourc...
- gwern 12y ago
  > Yes, but when the better is significantly better, and only a small marginal cost, it's worth doing. No, it's not significantly better, and I'm not sure if it's better at all. Timestamping in the Bitcoin block chain is easy to use, cheap, convenient, highly secure, and relatively easy to explain to others. Your solution does not exist yet, and from the sound of it, even when it exists will have only one of those properties (highly secure), optimistically. > though that was not the question asked. Indeed. I don't expect humanity to be around in 100b years. I don't expect money to be around in 100b years. And I certainly don't expect SHA-256 or the elliptic curves used in Bitcoin to all remain intact over 100 billion years. (What's the longest a cryptographic hash in wide use has ever survived so far? 30 years? What about public key systems? 40 years maybe?) > Actually I am and have: I see. I upgrade my assessment of you from 'preachy asshole' to simply 'clueless person who doesn't understand people and their needs and builds castles in the air'.