Random Announcements
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I’ve just finished reading “Annihilation” (the book the movie was based on). It is truly weird and beautiful and generally excellent, but it very much reinforced an idea I’ve always had about the planet and our place in it. We talk about destroying the planet and ruining nature, and we’re really not. We are damaging our own habit, but nature doesn’t care. Eventually our effect on natural processes will render the planet uninhabitable for human life, and nature still won’t care.
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I’ve just finished reading “Annihilation” (the book the movie was based on). It is truly weird and beautiful and generally excellent, but it very much reinforced an idea I’ve always had about the planet and our place in it. We talk about destroying the planet and ruining nature, and we’re really not. We are damaging our own habit, but nature doesn’t care. Eventually our effect on natural processes will render the planet uninhabitable for human life, and nature still won’t care.
I highly recommend reading the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy, Authority and Acceptance.
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@Filthy:
It seems totally frivolous to mine something completely theoretical that is a string of numbers that's supposedly worth 43k each. I am of the opinion that humans are a cancer on the planet and it probably be won't be long until we go extinct.
@Filthy what's cool about blockchain (not the mining per se) is the notion of digital scarcity, which was impossible before–it is all too easy to copy bits in the digital realm. One has to reconsider the concept of theft even; if you "steal" something digital, you haven't deprived someone else (much like ideas and intellectual property). Some would say this isn't theft and that it is impossible without depriving the owner (I'm not one of them).
But as to the "supposedly worth 43k each," I would go a level deeper and question what 43k really means in the first place? Isn't that every bit as arbitrary? I feel that money is arbitrary unless tied to a durable physical good with intrinsic value, and that hasn't been the case for some time. It is, as William Gibson put it (talking about "cyberspace," a term he invented), a "consensual hallucination" that money has any worth. If we all decided that it didn't, it wouldn't.
And as for humans being a cancer, humanity has existed as a species living in balance for longer than it has a cancerous, positive feedback cycle of consumption. The issue IMO isn't humans, it is the rise of agriculture and the industrial revolution (civilization) that triggered resistance to famine and a positive feedback cycle of exponential population growth and attendant resource consumption that has run unchecked ever since. The history of this civilization is very short, and in that short time our exponential growth has brought us to the brink of collapsing the Earth's ability to support us. This is a great piece on how short our time here really is:
Can't agree more with @neph93 that the Earth will not notice and life will continue, though I'd hate to see a species that was capable of colonizing the solar system (and should the laws of physics allow it, the galaxy) meet such an ignominious end (while taking a number of species with it).
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I get what you're saying and I know all about it. But I think money is worth what it is worth because we work for it. And I even own some cryptocurrency as a way to get more real money. It would be cool if you could get some kind of currency by volunteering in your community or helping people out. Not just creating another system to perpetuate and endless cycle of plutonomy. I totally agree with Ann. But I am just doing my job and I think the whole thing is interesting, like a morbid curiousity.
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@Filthy:
It seems totally frivolous to mine something completely theoretical that is a string of numbers that's supposedly worth 43k each. I am of the opinion that humans are a cancer on the planet and it probably be won't be long until we go extinct.
Humans certainly have a unique ability to consume out of proportion.
I mean, gold is pretty much totally useless for any practical purpose and yet humans have valued it, killed for it, and destroyed the environment for it for most of recorded history. As others have alluded to, our money is merely a nebulous (and ever more strained) agreement on value.
@Filthy:
I get what you're saying and I know all about it. But I think money is worth what it is worth because we work for it. And I even own some cryptocurrency as a way to get more real money. It would be cool if you could get some kind of currency by volunteering in your community or helping people out. Not just creating another system to perpetuate and endless cycle of plutonomy. I totally agree with Ann. But I am just doing my job and I think the whole thing is interesting, like a morbid curiousity.
You touched on something here, when you say, "we work for it." I'd refine that to say: "we acquire money primarily to transport our current efforts through space and time." Like, your job pays you in excess of what you need to survive, so you can save some of this "effort" for future needs. The issue is that it's becoming increasingly clear that the USD is NOT a great way to transport that effort into the future. For westerners, this is a difficult concept to grapple with, because we've had extremely atypical monetary stability since, and due to the outcome of, WWII. What's more, the forces that are making it a poor choice are disproportionately distributing the benefits while widely distributing the costs of them to every holder of USD (the cantillon effect). This situation is eroding the usefulness of the USD as the basis for the global monetary system (this is a good article that takes you on a quick trip through the petro-dollar system).
I'd recommend reading Von Mises' 1912 Theory of Money and Credit (available for free here). It was abundantly clear to me that the closest thing we have to a pure currency, as described by Von Mises, is bitcoin. LVM would not have recognized anything else in use today as a currency, save BTC.
As for the energy expenditure, that's a whole other discussion, but suffice to say that humans in general use a lot of energy on sh*t that's not at all useful (kardashians?), and criticizing a particular use of energy for the sole reason that it is extremely easy to measure, is illogical, even if BTC was not at all useful (and there's a very strong argument that it's extremely useful).
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I don’t think the energy expended on the kardashians can be equated to the carbon footprint of Bitcoin [emoji23]. Not the same type of wanking.
Joking aside, I’m going to look into the links you posted. Interesting stuff for sure, and you make good points.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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What differentiates fiat currency from crypto isn't IMO that we work for it, because you could in theory be compensated in anything that you perceive to be valuable. What really differentiates fiat currency from crypto is that a national treasury is supposedly backing it. Another aspect is that where algorithms, math, and computation dictate the supply of cryptocurrency, central national banks do so for fiat currencies. So there is a certain democratization of monetary supply and where it winds up with crypto, though as states like China jumped on and built mining farms that was impacted.
Gold is one of the most useful metals there is. It conducts well without tarnishing, it's ductile, it alloys with other metals… There's some in whatever you're reading this on (phone, tablet, or computer) and it even has dental and medical uses. You might not want to make a weapon out of pure gold, and historically it was valued more for its beauty and workability than its modern industrial applications, but it's far from a useless metal then or especially now. And it's rarer than platinum in the crust (being a heavier metal and harder for supernovae to produce). If you want to talk about something stupid we killed and tortured for, sugar should be top of the list. Sugar plantations literally worked slaves to death so people could have a little sweet in their tea.
BTC is useful, sure, but useful for a lot of nefarious purposes. So the utility cuts two ways. I am sure we would be horrified to hear about some of the things that have been funded by BTC: human trafficking, terrorism, murder for hire, ransomware, kidnappings, etc. My guess is that the use of crypto for bad things and the environmental implications mentioned above make it a net negative--so far--for humanity.
Far cooler as it pertains to blockchain tech IMO is guaranteed execution and smart contracts.
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I’m thoroughly enjoying this exchange fellas and learning from it too. Hope I had something more to contribute beyond my appreciation and respect…please keep it going.
Thanks for the links suggested @tvenuto , I’ll read up ! -
Not the same type of wanking.
I just wanna point out that I think is the best line ever written on this forum… (Totally stealing it too...)
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@Filthy:
There's people that think the we aren't the first human civilization there's been on earth because they keep finding artifacts that carbon date back to pre-human civilization times. Complex gadgets and stuff that shouldn't exist. Unless it's some kind of hoax.
Go check out the Silurian Hypothesis…
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths-only-civilization/557180/
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BTC is useful, sure, but useful for a lot of nefarious purposes. So the utility cuts two ways. I am sure we would be horrified to hear about some of the things that have been funded by BTC: human trafficking, terrorism, murder for hire, ransomware, kidnappings, etc. My guess is that the use of crypto for bad things and the environmental implications mentioned above make it a net negative–so far--for humanity.
Far cooler as it pertains to blockchain tech IMO is guaranteed execution and smart contracts.
I'm going to address this part because it's a particularly pernicious bit of misinformation. The legacy financial system is absolutely LOUSY with suspicious activity. I use the term "suspicious" because if a bank sees a suspicious transaction, all they have to do to wash their hands of it is flag it as suspicious, they do not need to stop it or look into it further. The FINCEN files showed just the magnitude of this flow of dirty money. Wikipedia sums it thusly: "The reports describe over 200,000 suspicious financial transactions valued at over US$2 trillion that occurred from 1999 to 2017 across multiple global financial institutions." So, if BTC was ONLY used for illicit purposes, it would be less than half the magnitude as what was (probably) criminally passed through the TRACKED legacy system of financial institutions in that time. That does not even include cash-based crimes, which are themselves numerous! The RAND corporation did a study on Zcash (a privacy-focused coin) and did not find widespread evidence of illicit activity. Mrs. Yellen can say what she wants, but the data just doesn't support BTC or any other cryto being anything close to the problem that the good ol' USD is for criminal activity.
So, to sum up: if you own U.S. dollars, you are using the criminal's preferred currency. If you own bank stock, you yourself personally profited from criminal activity. Criminals use what they can. BTC is easier to move than cash, which is easier to move than gold, which is easier to move than grain. Things that are useful for humans are useful for criminals, I'm having trouble thinking of an exception to that statement.
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I'm going to be spending the next few days unplugged in case you're wondering where I'm at… I'll be getting some much needed r and r. I'll be back before the Pittsburgh hangout on the 25th and definitely for the FW21 reveal. XX
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Enjoy your well deserved R&R @Filthy !
