We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32848104.
I am pointing out with a sarcastic analogy that pre merge and post merge ethereum are not the same thing. Outwardly looking they are both ethereum but the post merge ethereum lacks the triangular incentive structure that pre merge ethereum had.
I am also pointing out the hypocrisy whereby people will happy accelerate climate change for the sake of leisure but get upset when someone else accelerates climate change for the sake of utility.
I am disappointed with your decision to detach this sub thread and any responses that may lead me to challenge my own perspective.
I do however respect that it was done with the intention of an preventing unproductive dialogue.
On a second reading though, it doesn't seem worse than the comment you were replying to, so I'll reattach it.
Btw, your follow-up here is a case of an interesting phenomenon I've noticed many times: people often give a better (i.e. more neutral and explicit) expression of what they originally meant, when explaining it in response to a moderation scolding.
It is as if the original comment presupposed the meaning and just gave us the snark, where the follow-up spells out the actual argument. Usually the actual argument isn't obvious; that is, it's obvious to you (i.e. the original commenter) because you have it in your head already—but it isn't obvious to the rest of us. Since that's the interesting bit, it would be better to include it up front (and then you could drop the snark as well).
I'm not sure if there's any way to actually use this pattern to improve the threads—short of scolding every comment, which would end up becoming background noise soon anyhow—but it's interesting how frequently it shows up.
I guess it could be considered snarky however I was mocking a common perspective (the idea) not the commenter that I was replying to (the person). The GPU shortage during the pandemic pushed a large percentage of the gaming population to despise cryptocurrency. Often they will criticise cryptocurrencies for contributing to climate change without realising the hypocrisy of that position.
If I had to write a rule to discourage comments like mine it would be: "critical replies should quote and address the points of disagreement in their response directly" This would cover indirect criticisms like mine that cause some people to react emotionally. I guess a rule like this might be too strict to enforce though maybe it could only be enforced on the most serious of offenders.
Crypto does nothing. Or you could argue, it 'entertains'. But in a way that is unnecessary (it's a distraction, not entertainment), and in a manner that creates unnecessary energy costs (PoW vs PoS).
For you guys money is a done deal. For a HUGE part of the world, something as basic as money (or even water) is not. Try to be a little bit more empathic.
EDIT:
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world.htm
>>The term Third World was originally coined in times of the Cold War to distinguish those nations that are neither aligned with the West (NATO) nor with the East, the Communist bloc.
“Third world” was just a grouping of nations that didn’t align themselves with the USA or USSR during the cold war.
Over time labelling a country as “3rd world” become the de facto way of categorising it as a “developing country”.
There are at least a dozen 'very solid' currencies that people anywhere should be able to transact in, notably the USD.
All of which you 'own'.
If there are helpful things they can do, 'digital' currencies, especially USD, (one that is not mess) would be imminently useful.
If you thought the 'petro dollar' was a big thing wait until the 'digital dollar' and entire economies de facto switch to USD.
There are capital controls in place in these countries that make holding foreign currency simultaneously difficult and illegal.
This is why I believe a US CBDC and CBDC wars are highly likely.
A CBDC allows nations to control those nations that use their currency and the increasing it’s use allows the issuing nation to debase the currency to their advantage.
The only problem is distribution of technology but this is only a matter of time.
Your comment is like telling someone poor “just go to work”, or telling people dying of hunger: “you don’t need to die of hunger, you can eat!”.
It might work as a backup option to people who are less lucky. That's the majority of the world. Whether it's a good option depends on a situation.
In any case, it's not for you to judge if it's necessary or not.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie_Babies
Before you get all worked up about "crypto is better than tulips!", I'm primarily responding to your question by saying that _just because_ people are willing to pay (sometimes exorbitant amounts) for something doesn't imply it has that value.
I prefer to think of value as a function of rarity and utility. I'll skip over rarity but utility can include the possibility of selling something for more than it was purchased at some time in the future.
If someone pays an exorbitant amount for something it has that value to them at the time of purchasing. Whether that value is reflected in the market price or persists over time is something else though. Value is not static. Value is dynamic. You can observe this both personally and in the markets.
I am more and more frustrated with the energy angle of crypto. We live on a technological world that consumes energy, everything has an energy cost. The goal for an advanced civilization is not reduce energy usage, but make it cheaper, cleaner and more abundant! Why does people complaining about "0.5% of world energy usage" think we're researching fusion energy? So we can stop consuming it?
It's such a populist and uninformed argument that drives me up the wall. We can discuss the pros and cons of PoW and PoS, but using the "it consumes as much as X country" argument is intellectually dishonest and pushes forward a particular agenda. How much energy does porn use? Video games? Advertising? Spam? Space heaters? Surely we could do without them and consume even less energy.
Do you know how we can measure the technological advancement of a civilization? By how much energy they have at their disposal ready to use. [1] Not by how much energy they have saved.
We all hate climate change, let's push for cleaner energy instead of glorifying idiotic energy reduction slogans. If governments were to put a tax on energy generation from fossil fuels, crypto miners will be the first to set up hydro and solar plants to run their GPUs. Because mining makes only sense if you can get cheap energy, otherwise it's unprofitable. But that's a more nuanced and intellectual argument than "Bitcoin warms the planet!" and doesn't fit as nicely on a top-voted comment on a forum.
The issue most people have with Bitcoin is about it's value. It uses tremendous amounts of energy for what most people perceive as little to no tangible return, and the view is that we could use the same energy (and maintain the same "technological advancement" as you put it) for more valuable purposes; things essential to our survival both on an individual level (warmth/cooling, food, shelter) and as a species (accelerating our move to renewables, protected biodiversity, enabling simulations for improvements in medicine and the like).
Your argument seems to be against a fictitious opponent, or one at the extreme end of the normal distribution. Very few if any are campaigning against only reducing energy usage. Most are campaigning for a redistribution of Bitcoins energy consumption, about 0.55% of global production, to accelerate our technological progress.
Minor and probably distant concern. All forms of energy usage have losses, mostly heat. If consumption keeps going up forever, then at some point the accumulated generated heat will become a problem on itself. But let’s solve the more present matters first.
Why? Do you think every additional watt of energy will make us happier? The countries using the most energy per capita are gulf countries like Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE. The population there is 10-20% residents, the rest are quasi-slaves living in awful conditions (hopefully you heard about what they did for the World Cup).
> Do you know how we can measure the technological advancement of a civilization? By how much energy they have at their disposal ready to use.
Again, is the middle-eastern civilization more advanced? Most of them are still monarchies.
We already live in an energy-abundant society. Making more energy will not solve the underlying problems of it.
What did they do? I mean, besides the ridiculous Guardian article claiming unrealistically low death rates among immigrant workers. (discussed on HN earlier at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930117)
> the rest are quasi-slaves living in awful conditions
How would you describe the much worse lives of those people in their countries of origin?
I was born in one of those countries, and personally know people who have made the choice to work in these counties. Do understand that people are not choosing to be quasi slaves because their lives are better as quasi slaves. No, more often it's a choice to create better lives for their families, and sometimes rarely it's a choice by their parents to ship off one out of their seven children to generate income. This quasi slavery is only possible through the insane arbitrage generated by petrodollars, and because we only selectively choose to be morally outraged at human rights violation only when it's done by the villain of the week.
Reminds me of people that were sure the Internet wouldn't go anywhere in the 80s. Technologies don't have to necessarily be useful on day 1 or even 1000 to be eventually successful.
Sun’s mass is 2e30 kg. E=mc^2 gives you max energy. (2e30 * 9e16).
Assume we start with one joule this year. Each year increasing energy output by 5%.
How long will it take till we use-up whole sun?
ln(2e30 * 9e16)/ln(1.05) = 2230 years
How long till we use up whole milky way? (Around 1.15e12 solar masses)
ln(2e30 * 1.15e12 * 9e16)/ln(1.05) = 2799
How long till we use-up whole universe? (10e53 kg)
ln(10e53 * 9e16)/ln(1.05) = 3348 years
Our potential is not limitless, exponential growth is not sustainable even on universe’s scale. Eventually we will reach hard wall.
2. Crypto heating (mining and poW) is very inefficient use of resource (as in, percentage of planet using crypto vs percent of total energy required for it). Not a smart thing for humanity to do.
3. Energy being limited, makes it shared resource. Crypto heating raises energy prices for others.
It’s so wasteful to be using electricity when we could all be playing chess or Yazee instead.