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Comment by Isinlor | Hacker News Reader

This is basically what all life does.

Thermodynamically, life can be described as an open system which makes use of gradients in its surroundings to create imperfect copies of itself.

Crypto currencies still have a problem with creating copies of itself, but humans are happy to oblige.

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Not really.

Life transforms matter and energy into increasing structure and complexity.

A classic pathological life-like process is the paperclip maximizer.

The paperclip maximizer transforms matter and energy into a regular structure of low complexity.

Crypto is one step worse than the paperclip maximizer. It converts matter and energy into pseudo-random numbers.

The only structure discernible within the randomness is the mechanism that induces organic lifeforms to work on behalf of crypto.

Hear hear, can I get an amen for Komolgorov?

https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C... https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C...

Now let's clippyfy the universe:

https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index.html

Comparing life itself to crypto is ridiculous.

Not entirely. Energy utilization is a common proxy for technological development. If a society is plowing tons of energy into crypto mining, then by definition somebody is getting utility out of it. (Which doesn't preclude it all being a Ponzi scheme, but that's another story.)

Life, the original RNA Ponzi scheme.

Makes you wonder if there are any other RNA Ponzi schemes in the universe.

Isn't crypto ridiculous too? Rai stones look objectively more sensible and they are ridiculous.

I'm not saying the technology is ridiculous, I'm just saying the overall implementation and outcomes would look like a madness to someone from the past or indeed the future.

Rai stones are less weird than they look once you learn that some super expensive art is held in freeport warehouses and stays there even when bought and sold to different owners. Valuing a painting you own but never see at millions of dollars that gets bought and sold to others who never see it isn’t that much different than saying a certain immobile Rai stone is worth X of Y.

Cryptocurrency is more ridiculous than both of the above, imo. Rai stones can be used as material, art can be looked at and enjoyed, cryptocurrency is random numbers controlling access to a ledger.

absolutely. as the far west was incredibly ridiculous. this is not a cryptocurrency issue, that is humans being humans

It's not, unless you think that e.g. cyanobacteria causing the Great Oxidation Event were somehow objectively more useful than cryptocurrencies.

Mind you the Great Oxidation Event wiped good chunk of life back then.

Mainly because oxygen was toxic to anaerobic life and it also oxidized methane making Earth into a snowball.

"Use" is always in relation to an someone's or something's end. Without knowing what the relevant ones are, the comparison fails.

For all us, uh, air breathing mammals, yes, the great oxidation event was a great deal more useful, objectively, than cryptocurrencies.

The main point is that this hunger for resources without regard for consequences is the very core of life.

We did not exist back then. And cyanobacteria did not have a great plan of creating mammals.

Note that I qualified my statement. I didn't say that the great oxygenation event was objectively useful to the moon, I said it was objectively more useful to air breathing mammals than running difficult computations to control write access to a ledger.

The random waste from cryptocurrencies just turns into heat, so I expect it opens up ~zero new possibilities. Have fun though!

How would you even define 'more usefull' in this context?

How is cryptocurrency waste heat different from bank server waste heat? Only because crypto has a dramatically worse efficiency? I guess both my crypto wallet and my bank account are products of waste heat that produce zero new possibilities.

The comparison was to oxygen.

And then I'm separately making the claim that using proof of work won't set the stage for anything interesting in the future, no matter how much heat it generates.

From the outside view of an alien observer, is there any difference to us plastering mars with solar panels for crypto mining vs plastering mars with suburban developments? Would we, had we a powerful telescope pointed at a neighbouring solar system, be able to tell the difference?

Can I be clear you cannot find a clear distinction between a made up currency and places where humans live?

I can, but I'm a human. My point was: Can an outsider discern it? If they can, would they put much meaning to it?

What? Are you saying that whether aliens can make a distinction is an important part of a decision making framework?

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